


you're a tree in the deep forest (i breathe you in)

by heartofashes



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: (jeonghannie you're not fooling anyone we all know you're a massive softie), Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Vampire Jeonghan, Witch Joshua, Yoon Jeonghan is Bad at Feelings, acts of service, but not in a horrible way (he's just an idiot), side gyuhao - Freeform, soft tender oblivious pining, werewolf cheol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25206403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofashes/pseuds/heartofashes
Summary: It’s not exactly fate, perhaps, the way Choi Seungcheol consistently stumbles into their lives, half-battered, half-bloody, but it seems close enough.A predestined pattern of some sort.
Relationships: Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Hong Jisoo | Joshua, Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Hong Jisoo | Joshua/Yoon Jeonghan, Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Yoon Jeonghan, Hong Jisoo | Joshua/Yoon Jeonghan
Comments: 66
Kudos: 264





	1. reckoning

**Author's Note:**

> for julie, my fellow connoisseur of cheol's resting tender pining face <3
> 
> (title from 'come to me' by svt vocal unit)

_Touching you I catch midnight_

_as moon fires set in my throat_

_I love you flesh into blossom_

_I made you_

_and take you made_

_into me._

**_-Audre Lorde, Recreation_ **

\---

The knock on the door reverberates across their modest two-bedroom apartment, as loud as the thunder crackling outside their window.

(The second bedroom is only a makeshift study, only a ruse they like to keep up for their conservative middle-aged neighbours, even if they don’t need to, even if they’ll move somewhere else in a few more years when people start noticing the conspicuous lack of age lines around their eyes.)

It strikes something akin to fear in Jeonghan’s heart, an alien sensation, hardly experienced now that he’s hovering on the tail-end of an entire century’s worth of disasters. But it’s there anyway, grown more poignant in the months since a certain scruffy-looking werewolf stumbled into the bar he co-runs with his husband of fifty years (companion of even longer), reaching an imminent crescendo in the folds of his nonexistent heartbeat.

Joshua stirs beside him in bed, makes a sound halfway between a confused whimper and hitch of mild terror. It seems, Joshua isn’t entirely immune to this selfsame fear; after all they have a near-telepathic connection, in metaphor if not literality - their thoughts always spiral in a similar direction, their breaths tied together by an unseverable invisible string.

“The full moon was yesterday, wasn’t it?” Joshua murmurs, sleep still heavy in his inflection, “Do you think-”

“I don’t know,” Jeonghan’s voice is far more placid than he would like it to be, far more structured than the shuddering walls of his (nonexistent) heart. “But I’ll go get it, you stay here.”

He presses a placating kiss to Joshua’s hairline anyway, knowing how much it centers his husband, knowing how much Joshua needs it right now - unlike Jeonghan, Joshua’s heart is a precious steadily-beating thing, flush with blood and feeling, very much _existent._ It needs frequent succour, frequent bursts of reassurance from Jeonghan’s lips, fingers, body.

Thunder strikes outside once more, rattling the delicate living room windowpanes, droplets of cold, ferocious rain trickling in from the seepage in their ceiling. Jeonghan’s fear is like a vice along his neck as he throws on his nightrobe and finally prods along to the door, unlocking it with shaky fingers. 

It’s almost exactly what he expected - or _who_ he expected - and yet the sight is catastrophic to the state of his (nonexistent) heart like nothing he could have anticipated, that knot of fear deep within him multiplying in size, clawing and chafing at his insides.

“H-hey,” stutters out an entirely disheveled Choi Seungcheol, his dark wavy hair in complete disarray, knotted and clumpy; his jacket torn, his shirt buttoned the wrong way. A bruise is forming under his left eye, angry and dark blue; and the cut on his bottom lip is oozing fresh, simmering blood (Jeonghan should be immune to it after years and years of practicing restraint, yet it makes him hold his breath, makes him stiffen from head to toe). “I- I was….I just…”

“What happened?” Jeonghan croaks, hoarse and pathetic, “Are you okay?”

Seungcheol looks up at him with the most painfully earnest eyes Jeonghan has ever seen, holding in them rivers of despair, disquiet, longing. Jeonghan’s nonexistent heart is a traitor once again, flouncing in his alabaster chest like it’s desperately trying to kick-start itself, desperately trying to _exist._

“I’m sorry,” Seungcheol whimpers, a seed shrivelled-up in the sun, a wounded bird flapping its sluggish wings. His eyes continue to glimmer with an emotion Jeonghan cannot reconcile with, cannot put a name to, unless he wants decades of resolve to pulverise in a mere split second. “I-it’s late. I shouldn’t have come...I shouldn’t have disturbed you-”

“ _Choi Seungcheol,”_ There’s a different voice now, shrouded in compassion despite the splinters appearing around its edges, despite its gentle tenor of something akin to a chiding, a vague warning that is barely palpable yet unmistakably present. It’s a balance Jeonghan could never straddle even if he tried, a balance only someone with endless reservoirs of patience could wield with such alacrity. 

Power and empathy, always going hand-in-hand.

“Don’t you ever apologise for showing up on my doorstep.”

It’s only Hong Jisoo, only his beloved Shua. Only the high witch of downtown Seoul, harnesser of the elements, glorious possessor of a flesh-and-blood, steadily pumping, kind and magnificent heart. Only Jeonghan’s husband.

Joshua’s nightrobe is undone, thrown over his rumpled sleep-shirt, his dark purple hair falling over his eyes like flowering nightshade. He walks over to the two of them, arms crossed around his chest - Jeonghan can’t tell if that’s a sign of indignation or a subconscious defense mechanism - taking in the hapless state of the werewolf on their aforementioned doorstep with staggering intensity.

“Are you going to come in, then?” Joshua prods once more, since neither Seungcheol nor Jeonghan can do much apart from gawking at Joshua with matching slack-jawed goldfish mouths, both of them at a sudden loss for words. “Are you going to let us help you?”

And that does the trick - it always does the trick, doesn’t it? Joshua says his words don’t carry deliberate magic, that his dexterity with the elements is limited only to his fingers, but in moments like this, Jeonghan thinks every millimeter of Joshua oozes and disseminates his art, every word that escapes his lips is fortified with a spell. Seungcheol finally stumbles inside, a limp prominent in his right leg (Jeonghan makes a mental note to examine the wounds that lie beneath the fabric of his torn trousers, hoping against hope that none of them are fatal), and Joshua catches Seungcheol almost on an instinct, their palms slotting together in rhythmic tandem, two musical notes fusing. 

Jeonghan tries to stamp out the pinpricks of desire that simmer in his veins at the sight, tries desperately to ignore the subtle way in which Seungcheol leans into Joshua’s shoulder while the latter leads him towards their living room, using Joshua’s entire slender frame for support _(it’s probably the wounds acting up,_ Jeonghan austerely reminds himself, _get your fucking head straight)._ Jeonghan attributes the churning of his stomach to the snarl of yet another thunderbolt outside, another rattling of window-glass that sets his teeth on edge. 

“I didn’t want to bother you,” Seungcheol is now saying, curled up nearly into a ball on their roomy living room couch, his ridiculously long eyelashes fanning against furrowed eyebrows as he looks up at Joshua’s hunkered form. “But-”

“But, you had nowhere else to go,” Joshua is murmuring in reply, tone far more mellow now, far less chiding. His eyes scan the pale expanse of Seungcheol’s face, flitting between bruised under-eye and battered lip, between the defined bridge of nose and the surprisingly dainty curvature of chin _(assessing,_ Jeonghan reminds himself again, _he’s just assessing the extent of the wounds_ ), meeting Seungcheol’s gaze only after the assessment is complete, after a possible solution has been sussed out. 

That’s how Joshua always functions, deconstructing everything in parts, isolating the problem bit by bit until no sign of damage is left behind. _“Magic is always methodical,”_ Joshua had once said, centuries ago when they first met, _“It may seem like mere sparks in the air, but there is calculation to it, a pragmatism in every flick of finger.”_ There’s a reason it’s Joshua that’s always better equipped to handle a calamity, not him. There’s a reason _Joshua’s_ the high witch, role model and mentor to millions of bright-eyed apprentice witches, and Jeonghan is a mere blip in the radar of every vampire this side of East Asia, a mere footnote in history. 

Everyone thinks Jeonghan chose to forgo a coven because he wanted to cohabit with his witch husband instead, but truth is, for all the air of enigma he likes to construct around himself, he’s entirely useless when it comes to being around people. He can’t carefully suss out a situation like Joshua, can’t gauge what another person is feeling, can’t anticipate what people might need from him. Him and Joshua _work_ because Joshua does that for him, because Joshua is always more than ready to compensate for Jeonghan’s flaws and fill every gaping void within his soul. 

But Choi Seungcheol? _He’s_ a thunderstorm Jeonghan was wholly unprepared for - is still unprepared, even after months and months of enduring him.

“Y-you did the right thing, coming here.” Jeonghan tries anyway, tries to be that person who is _there_ for others, pretends that he’s amidst a coven of other vampires, pretends that he can be a beacon of support even if the space within his ribcage is hollow. “We’ll keep you safe.”

Seungcheol stares up at him with unblinking eyes, glistening with a sincerity that undoes every bit of Jeonghan's resistance, that makes Jeonghan want to plunge right into the eye of the storm. A word seems to escape his lips, but Jeonghan is barely equipped to decipher it, lets it hang between them like invisible taut thread, holding all three of them into place, in endless thrall. 

Purple sparks have materialised from Joshua's fingertips, haloing the room in an effervescent glow - Seungcheol sucks in a quick breath, but it reeks of resignation rather than alarm, an unabashed aftermath of Joshua's healing magic. The sparks siphon into a steady beam, Joshua deftly manouvering them along the pallid expanse of Seungcheol's skin, fingers dancing in careful harmony, face screwed up in utmost concentration. Jeonghan has seen Joshua do this a million times, has seen Joshua wield his powers with equal parts gentleness and ferocity, and yet it is always uniquely magnificent, uniquely a spectacle to behold. He's awestruck at the skill with which Joshua's hands move, at his molten honey voice muttering incantations in an ancient tongue Jeonghan will never know, at the incomparable depth in his gaze. And, judging from how Seungcheol's mouth is half-open, how the sincerity in his eyes is intensified to an extent Jeonghan doesn't even want to _consider,_ Seungcheol is awestruck too.

 _This is it,_ Jeonghan thinks. _There's no more_ _running from it._ And his nonexistent heart is like lightning in his chest, warring to outdo the lightning outside their window, illuminating all the hidden, withering parts of him that he forgot even existed. 

Seungcheol whimpers silently, and Joshua's face is as close to him as ever, softening in an instant like melting dewdrops. "Ssh, it's okay," Joshua whispers, "It's gonna be okay, I've got you, Cheolie."

Seungcheol whimpers again, but far more subdued this time, as if his pain is finally fading, as if Joshua's magic is finally erasing every hint of the terror that had gripped him tonight. (Jeonghan knows what it's like, has been on its receiving end far too many times to not know what it's like.)

"I'm okay," Seungcheol whispers back, surrounded in tendrils of purple, "You've got me."

\---

"It was The Watch," Joshua says, later in the kitchen, nursing a glass of his nourishment potion - healing magic like that always drains a significant amount of his energy, he always needs a pick-me-up afterwards. "I know I'm not supposed to read Cheol’s mind without his explicit consent, but some of it slipped past his consciousness while I was working on his wounds - I could see brief flashes of what happened."

Seungcheol is asleep on their couch, wrapped securely in Jeonghan's favourite vintage quilt. The magical healing process is as physically and emotionally draining for the recipient as is for the wielder of said magic - that's why government protocol mandates strict medical supervision for all practicing healer witches. But Joshua has been offering backdoor consultations to the supernatural community for centuries now, is firm in his belief that "supervision" is yet another tactic to discourage witches from serving the path nature laid out for them.

Jeonghan swallows hard, trying to drown out the sounds of Seungcheol's soft snoring that his supernatural hearing can't help but fixate on, even if Seungcheol is an entire room away.

"W-was it bad?" Jeonghan hates that his voice quivers, that he can't keep the hysteria at bay. Joshua, who knows him inside out, who has memorised every tell, every slip-up Jeonghan could ever make, _sees_ through him like always, looks so apologetic Jeonghan wants to scream. 

"Yeah," Joshua's exhale is heavy, perhaps driven by the same panic Jeonghan cannot exterminate from his being. "They did a real number on him tonight. And this is, what? The fifth time it has happened since we met him? For heaven's sake, he's only been a werewolf for nine months! Can they pick on someone their own size!"

Joshua doesn't get _this_ easily agitated - that is always Jeonghan's domain, the flighty unpredictable vampire who runs hot and cold at a frequency that can give any innocent bystander whiplash - but here Joshua is now, nourishment potion briefly abandoned so he can get up and pace across the kitchen, arms fidgeting with the hem of his robe. "I can't keep seeing Seungcheol like that, Hannie! Everytime he shows up with an all new set of bruises my heart nearly _stops_ and I feel so fucking useless! Me, the high witch of downtown Seoul, with networks that go far beyond the darkest terrains of the supernatural community - I can't even protect a fledgling werewolf from a bunch of hateful _bigots!"_

That's exactly what they are, aren't they? Bigots. The Watch. Words that seem interchangeable but only to people like Jeonghan and Joshua and Seungcheol (and countless others) who continue to live in the shadows even if they have "assimilated" with the human population, on paper. Even if they are supposed to be equals, on paper.

Centuries ago (long before Jeonghan set foot on this cursed earth), when the first peace treaty was signed, humans promised supernaturals a chance at a life of dignity. No more having to kill to survive, no more being hunted as trophies, no more being seen as brutal predators who will steal your children late at night. There was the temptation of legal reforms; of supernaturals getting to own and live in housing alongside humans, gaining education and employment alongside humans, gaining special healthcare facilities, marriage and adoption rights. The breathtaking lure of official training academies for young witches, official blood banks (with consensually donated human blood) for vampires, transformation centres for werewolves to avail during full moons - where they could transform without the looming danger of accidentally hurting someone. For faefolk, there was the promise of independent domains where they would be left unperturbed, for hybrids (children born of interspecies mating) there was the assurance that they wouldn’t be disregarded as ‘mutts’, that they could carve their unique niche both among humans and supernaturals.

And yet, democracy rarely comes without loopholes. Laws - however steadfast - rarely change perspectives that have been ingrained over and over and over, across generations and generations.

They say, it's something inherent - the need to protect your species, to eliminate all threats to the extinction of your species. Human-led university courses continue to perpetuate endless tomes that underline, in no particular order:

_Vampires are naturally predisposed to spilling human blood. Werewolves, by their very genetic propensities, cannot distinguish between who they kill or turn when they’re deep in the throes of the full moon’s effects. Witches, no matter what kind of magic they practice, are creatures of illusion and deceit, never to be trusted._

(You get the drift.)

And humans? Humans have to protect their own too, of course. In the strangely cyclical supernatural food chain, they know where they stand. 

Which is why, the only way Jeonghan and Joshua can live in an apartment as cushy is this, in a neighborhood where the drains never clog up the morning after a storm, is by pretending they aren’t supernatural at all. Which is why, after Seungcheol was first _bitten_ by an unknown werewolf in the middle of the night, he was kicked out of his job, evicted from his previous apartment, disowned, within seconds, by his parents.

Which is why, The Watch has existed for as long as the peace treaty has existed - an amorphous group of humans who change with every generation, but stay true to the same principle - human purity.A world with a singular species ruling supreme, a world without supernaturals. 

_Fringe group,_ is what official law enforcement calls them, but the supernatural community has known for years that they’re far from just a few extremist humans running rampant. They’re organised, they’re _dangerous,_ they know how to kill and maim better than even the most bloodthirsty vampires, the most ruthless dark witches. They know how to systematically pick their targets, know how to eliminate so-called “threats” with more precision and ease than Jeonghan can even dream of.

And Jeonghan _has_ dreamt of it - or rather, has had nightmares about it - what could happen if one of their unsuspecting human neighbours found out who Jeonghan and Joshua _really_ are, what could happen if Watch brethren broke into their home late at night, bright red symbols emblazoned on their jackets, and tore Jeonghan and Joshua apart, once and for all.

It’s worse, however, to imagine _Seungcheol_ being the one in danger, _Seungcheol_ being the one becoming a deliberate target, a pliant punching bag to an organisation hell-bent on eradicating their species….

A desperate shudder goes down Jeonghan’s spine. What has Seungcheol even done? He _is_ just a fledgling, barely finding his footing in the supernatural world, how could he even have ended up in their radar?

“Should I...talk to Minghao about it?” Jeonghan hesitantly suggests, trying, once again to keep the panic at bay, and failing miserably, as always. “His coven… they have fought off The Watch before.”

Joshua pauses in his tracks, worries his lip between teeth in that specific manner he does when his brain is working a mile a minute, when his prowess with _gauging_ and _assessing_ culminates into something else entirely - a reckless bundle of nerves. 

“I don’t know,” he replies, shoulders collapsing in surrender, “If we involve Minghao....what if that just makes the target on Seungcheol’s back even worse? So far they haven’t done much beyond roughing him up, but what if they go after his life? _You know_ no one can stop them once they’re intending….an execution.”

Jeonghan _does._ He _does_ know. 

He has lost countless friends, lovers, compatriots to _executions,_ barbaric and bloody. Executions, where The Watch make a spectacle out of you, draw and quarter you in the middle of the town square and murder you in full view of a vicious, cheering mob.

He can’t…

He can’t lose Seungcheol to that. He can’t…

Almost like clockwork, right then, his senses choose to derail his train of thought. His supernatural hearing picks up a wince, followed by the light thud of pillows hitting the floor. A yawn, then the almost imperceptible splatter of bare feet against hardwood floor.

“Cheolie’s awake.” Jeonghan says, and Joshua’s breath catches. It’s like he’s suddenly kicked back into gear, wedged once again into the mould of the wise, calm, collected Solver Of Problems, Knower Of All Things. 

For a brief second, Jeonghan deeply resents that it’s always Joshua who has to take on the mantle of being the ‘mature’ one, how Jeonghan continues to be useless and helpless, utterly incompetent in crisis situations. But he’s forced to swallow that feeling and bury it deep within the recesses of his churning stomach as the gentle vibration of muted footsteps soon flood their eerily quiet apartment. 

“Hey,” Seungcheol’s broad (yet oddly soft) quilt-wrapped form appears in the doorway of the kitchen, his voice sluggish with sleep. “I’m sorry I just crashed on your couch.”

“Oh come on, Cheolie,” Joshua clucks at him, immediately walking over to cup Seungcheol’s (now swiftly-mending, in the aftermath of Joshua’s machinations) bruised cheek, “I told you, didn’t I? Never apologise for coming here. Never apologise for seeking our help.”

Seungcheol sucks in an audible breath, his eyes lingering on the long, graceful fingers that are enveloping his face. “But I keep doing this, I keep being-”

“Don’t,” Jeonghan can’t stop himself from interrupting, getting up from his chair but not quite summoning up the courage to get as close to Seungcheol as Joshua is, maintaining a respectable distance. “Don’t finish that sentence. Don’t ever insinuate you’re an inconvenience to us, because you’re not, okay?”

Seungcheol’s eyebrows shoot up in disbelief, and Jeonghan doesn’t blame him. It’s always Joshua who’s better with words, who’s much more deft at verbalising all the emotions this baffling werewolf makes them _both_ experience. Jeonghan has never said something so unflinchingly honest, has never bared the blistering crust of his (nonexistent) heart.

“Stay here tonight.” Jeonghan continues, prompted by a force that he no longer recognises, a desperation that is turning his insides into porous clay, “Take our bed, sleep comfortably. The storm isn’t going to let up anytime soon, and I don’t want you to try to get home when you’re still weak.”

Even Joshua seems stunned at the revelation, his hands abruptly dropping from Seungcheol’s cheeks so he can turn around to pin Jeonghan with an inscrutable look. 

(Frankly, the look isn’t quite so inscrutable - Jeonghan can tell what lies in its impossible depths, the brief burst of surprise slowly giving away to curiosity, then perhaps, a gentle glow of pride. “It’s okay, you know,” Joshua often whispers to him, late at night when they’re tangled in bed, breaths mingling in practiced symphony, “It’s okay to let people see who you really are. It’s okay to show them you care.”

 _It’ll never be okay,_ Jeonghan thinks. It never has been, in all the centuries he’s lived through, all the carnage he’s witnessed, all the unceremonious trampling of his _care._

Keeping his cards close to his chest is Darwinian adaptation. An essential survival tactic.

Only with this can his heart _remain_ nonexistent, free from the intense fragility that is only a byproduct of beating too fast, too frantic.)

Seungcheol’s coffee-brown eyes pierce into him like the sharpest of blades, and for a prolonged moment, Jeonghan regrets _everything._ There’s too much swirling inbetween the empty spaces under his sternum, violent waves that he doesn’t know what to do with, jangling against his defenses. He has to keep his eyes trained carefully on the floor, torn away from the combined onslaught of Joshua’s compassionate beaming and Seungcheol’s naked wonder.

“I agree,” Joshua is saying, but Jeonghan can only screw his eyes shut, let the words crash all over him as if the coldest bucket of water is being emptied over his head, “You should take the bed, Cheolie, be as comfortable as possible. Hannie and I can curl up on our spare mattress on the living room floor-”

“No,” Seungcheol is far too quick to interject, making the jangling in Jeonghan’s sternum even worse. Jeonghan’s eyes are still shut, but his vampire senses can make out the unmistakable twitching of Joshua’s eyebrows, the minuscule gasp of surprise he lets out.

“I mean,” Seungcheol is quick to clarify though, the sound of his hand grasping Joshua’s forefinger echoing along the length of Jeonghan’s ear canal. “If I’m taking the bed, you both are too.”

Then, a beat. “P-please?” Another exhale. “I don’t want to sleep alone.”

There it is again, loud and clear like the most untarnished bastion of truth. _This is it. There's no more running from it._

Jeonghan is but a wounded dove in Seungcheol’s palms, his life entirely at the werewolf's mercy.

He opens his eyes slowly, inexorably, and finally musters up the strength to stare at the only two people who have ever wreaked this much havoc across his entire being, their palms still enjoined, their eyes still glittering with open regard. 

And Jeonghan thinks this is worse than he ever imagined, worse than every form of destruction his recurring nightmares could foresee. This is his ultimate doom.

\---

Seungcheol fits between them like a magnet finding its geographic north, snug and serene.

He's still wrapped tightly in Jeonghan's favourite quilt, but has one arm thrown around Joshua's slender waist, has his back pressed squarely against Jeonghan's bare chest, his hair tickling Jeonghan's nose. His little snores flitter between Jeonghan and Joshua, filling up a space their far-too-large bed seems to have always been missing, always been yearning for. 

Jeonghan's throat is dry, his senses still wide awake. Vampires don't quite need a lot of sleep, but Jeonghan is never _this_ alert in bed, never _this_ overcome with a million conflicting emotions. Joshua too seems to be squirming underneath Seungcheol's firm grip, equally devoid of sleep, perhaps equally torn in a myriad different directions. With another delicate nudge of his body - extra careful, so as not to wake Seungcheol - Joshua turns around to stare at Jeonghan from above the mop of Seungcheol's messy curls, extends a hand to reach out for Jeonghan's. 

(Jeonghan catches it in a jiffy - ever-eager, ever-hankering.)

"We're fucked, aren't we, Hannie?" Joshua murmurs against the inky-blue darkness of their bedroom, punctuated only by yet another clap of thunder, yet another rattling of windows. The storm continues to rage; unrelenting, unmitigated.

"Yeah," is all Jeonghan can murmur in response, tightening his grasp on Joshua's hand, breathing in the haunting earthy scent of Seungcheol's skin, _absorbing_ the low susurration of blood so starkly audible in Seungcheol’s veins. It’s the purest form of torture. "I don't think...I don't think we can deny it anymore."

More rattling of windows. A floorboard creaking. Slim strands of wind pulsing in through the cracks, making Jeonghan shiver from head to toe. Seungcheol's chest, rising and swelling, his tiny exhales dissipating into the dank air.

Silence, stretching between them. Both him and his husband, wide awake in the dead of the night, staring up at their ceiling, completely at a loss. 

"What if we tell him," Joshua whispers back, "What if we tell him we're-"

Before Joshua can even complete that sentence, Jeonghan can't help but laugh bitterly. "Tell him what, Shua-yah? That the two of us - centuries old supernatural husbands - are utterly besotted with him? What's he going to say to that, do you think? _Ah, sorry, but I think maybe I should stop coming to you both for help whenever I'm emotionally and physically vulnerable from now on. You’re taking advantage of me."_

"That's unfair, Hannie," The furrow between Joshua's brows is prominent even amidst the dark, the indignation in his voice loud and clear, even if it's pitched at a whisper, "I can read his mind, you know-"

"Which you _shouldn't_ be doing without his consent."

 _"Hannie,_ you're being deliberately stubborn."

 _"Jisoo,"_ Jeonghan's voice is carefully mellow now, resignation mingled with resolve. After all, he only calls Joshua by his given name when he's truly serious, when he’s grasping at hapless straws to keep the carefully constructed barrier around his chest upright. "I've been on this earth long enough to know how it all eventually ends. What you and I have - it’s an exception, not the rule. I'm already incredibly happy with you, Shua. Seungcheol is just…. a moment of weakness, a brief transgression. It will go nowhere, will only lead to one more disaster. After all, we’re not the ones who get to have our fairytale endings.”

The wind whistles adamantly, punctuating the silence that settles between them, amplified further only by those damned little werewolf snores wedged into the junction of Joshua’s shoulders. Joshua’s chest rises and falls too, slower than Seungcheol’s, more measured than Seungcheol’s. Jeonghan hates that his hearing never quite allows for silence, for complete and utter quietude; there are always these little details protruding past the surface, screaming for his attention. 

The hand connecting with the meat of Jeonghan’s palm is suddenly a little clammy, though no less steadfast, no less comforting. 

Joshua, _Jisoo,_ still his husband. Still his companion in all things, even the messier predicaments. Even the messier emotions.

Joshua is as _devastated_ about this as he is.

“I love you, you know that right, Hannie?” Joshua finally says, his sigh mingling with the sound of the roaring wind outside, “And I _understand_ you, more than I have ever understood anyone. I will not argue with you tonight, because I see your misgivings, because I empathise with your feelings, I admire your courage. But I also want to say: maybe you should give Cheolie a little more credit. Maybe you should let yourself hope.”

_Hope._

Hope is a luxury built for humans. Who is _Jeonghan_ to hope? A puerile creature of the night, barely alive and breathing, heart continuously nonexistent.

Who is he but an eternal interloper, always watching from the shadows but never taking the leap. Always shivering under the weight of his own repressed grief, loss, despair. 

Hope is a fragile thing, a precious thing. Jeonghan is a deplorable monster entirely undeserving of it, forever alienated by it.

Jeonghan cannot let himself hope, but in the trickling hours past late midnight, thunder and lightning piercing through its veil, his husband’s hand clutched in his (a perilous reminder of what makes him whole, what refurbishes his forgotten _humanity)_ , his breath slackens. The wind combs through Seungcheol’s hair, and the werewolf lets out a minuscule sleepy whinny, nuzzling in closer to Jeonghan’s chest.

Jeonghan shuts his eyes, dizzy with blasphemous longing. 

\---

Jeonghan doesn’t believe in abstruse concepts of fate or destiny, but living with a witch for almost half a century does expose one to a certain kind of mythical thinking. 

It’s not exactly fate, perhaps, the way Choi Seungcheol consistently stumbles into their lives, half-battered, half-bloody, but it seems close enough. A predestined pattern of some sort.

Jeonghan remembers the first time they met him. Mingyu had found Seungcheol bleeding out in a deserted ditch - deep in the middle of territory frequented only by werewolf insurgents, violent anti-human gangs trying to drum up support to take on The Watch in battle (a futile cause, as it has been for generations). By the time Mingyu brought him over to their bar (long after closing hours), Seungcheol had been barely conscious, barely mustering the strength to tell them that his wounds were a result of his extremely harrowing _first_ _ever_ transformation. “The pain was unbearable,” Seungcheol had muttered half in a daze, while Joshua carefully laid him out on the long hardwood table in the bar’s backroom, “I tried to knock myself unconscious to make it stop. But it just hurt more.”

Jeonghan stood transfixed by Joshua’s side while the witch immediately rose to the occasion, blue and purple sparks erupting from his fingers, eyes intently scanning every nook and cranny of the bruises peeking out of Seungcheol’s tattered shirt. As always, the more competent among the two of them amidst times of crisis.

“Can you tell me your name?” Joshua had murmured as Seungcheol’s eyes threatened to flutter shut, as his breathing began to peter out, “It’s okay, you’re safe now. I’m here to help, okay? We all just want to take care of you.”

Seungcheol had swallowed the bile on his tongue, uttering a fierce howl of pain that Jeonghan felt straight in his gut, the _wolf_ in him exploding through the cracks. But in that moment, Seungcheol had seemed everything but menacing, scrambling for purchase under the muted barlights, curled up in visceral agony, tears coating his dirt-stained cheeks. He looked infinitely brittle, like even a single touch would destroy him, yet he had _survived,_ his breathing albeit laboured but no less _present._ Jeonghan had known, there and then, that this was more than just someone struggling to cope with a werewolf transformation - this was someone who has seen battle scars far greater than this, far more vicious than this. Some visible, some entirely invisible.

No one could relate to that more than Jeonghan.

As Seungcheol had whimpered out his name and Mingyu hovered around keeping up a steady stream of nervous commentary, airing his suspicions that Seungcheol was most probably abandoned by the werewolf who turned him, perhaps deemed unsuitable for a pack (“too weak maybe?” Mingyu had mused out loud, his lisp becoming more and more prominent through the fog of his anxiousness, “I don’t know”), there was no other explanation for him to have ended up where he had - Joshua expertly wielded his magic.

The coils of his purple-blue sparks had slowly enveloped Seungcheol’s listless body, dousing him in an unearthly glow. There was a sharp hitch in Seungcheol’s breath, then a widening of his pupils, his squirming hands stilling in an instant. Joshua’s face was scrunched up in concentration, but his eyes were ineffably kind, alternating between nodding along to whatever Mingyu was saying and staring down at Seungcheol’s panting (yet far more composed, under the machinations of Joshua’s magic) form. 

“Are you feeling any better?” Joshua had murmured, his voice a blanket of warm honey, and Seungcheol had let out a raggedy exhale, a perfunctory nod. Only Jeonghan was perceptive enough to notice Joshua’s shoulders sagging in relief - at the sorcery not being in vain, at the salvaging of another lost soul.

Jeonghan had wrapped an arm around Joshua’s waist, had leaned into his side to reassure, _it’s okay, you’re doing great, i’m here for you,_ even if he didn’t have the capacity to put it all into words, ever the emotionally stunted vampire. Seungcheol’s barely-lucid eyes had followed Jeonghan’s motion, had pinned _the both of them_ with an unflappable gaze. 

Jeonghan had felt an inexplicable shockwave travel up his spine, a peculiar feeling of being skewered at the stake, though he couldn’t for the life of him fathom why.

Perhaps, it really _was_ fate.

“I don’t think he should go back there,” Mingyu had been saying, the words sounding almost a little distant to Jeonghan, floating in liminal space, “He’s a fledgling, he’ll barely survive.”

“Can _your_ pack take him, Mingyu-yah?” Joshua had murmured in response, but his gaze was still steadfastly fixated on Seungcheol, singlemindedly focused on weaving purple-blue sparks along the length of Seungcheol’s injured knee.

“I don’t think so, hyung,” Mingyu fidgeted in consternation, and for the first time that night, Jeonghan had noticed the bags under his eyes, “You know how they’re like. They don’t take kindly to wolves that are...basically strangers. It’s all bullshit and I hate it, but I...it’s hard to get through to them.”

It was true. Mingyu’s was one of the rarest packs this side of Seoul - a pack that were family not just in principle but also in blood, the werewolf gene passed down among them across five generations. Very few werewolves are purebred wolves _by birth,_ either through their unwillingness to reproduce at all or through their unwillingness to stick around with a single pack long enough to actually build lasting kinship. Unlike vampire covens, werewolf packs weren’t bonded for life - they were nebulous, loyalties constantly shifting, their numbers either shrinking or expanding based on the circumstances. But the Kims had stayed true to their aphorisms of ‘family first’, of keeping the pack as endogamous as possible, keeping the werewolf gene firmly within their bloodline, refusing to admit any outsiders into their pack.

Mingyu was an anomaly - had always been one since he was a kid, always asking way too many questions about the pack’s archaic structure and being deemed the rebellious black sheep as a result. There was a reason he liked working at Jeonghan and Joshua’s eponymously titled bar, which catered specifically to a supernatural clientele, offered a much-needed safe space to many like Mingyu (or like Jeonghan, like Joshua) - desolate, living in the margins. There was a reason why Mingyu routinely looked out for helpless, injured supernaturals like Seungcheol, brought them to Joshua even at ungodliest hours of the night, desperately seeking help.

Jeonghan will never be even half the man Mingyu is, but he understood it, the frustrated and deflated tone of his voice when he admitted that his pack would never accept Seungcheol. He understood it, the constant vehement need to _rescue_ \- one life saved in return for the miserableness of his own existence.

Jeonghan, of all people, _understood_ it.

“He can stay here.”

Jeonghan didn't know where it came from, perhaps the urgency in Mingyu’s venting earlier, perhaps the sight of Seungcheol stretched out like that, bruises littering every inch of his body, heartbeat barely steady. Or perhaps, the warmth in Joshua’s fingers, a shimmer in his eyes that Jeonghan had rarely seen.

Joshua’s magic recognises _good._ And Jeonghan would trust it blindfolded.

“A-are you sure, hyung?” Mingyu stuttered, clearly surprised at the declaration. But Jeonghan had only stared down at Seungcheol, just like Joshua was doing, the werewolf beginning to catch his breath, regarding the two of them with that same unflappable look. But Jeonghan’s words had surprised the werewolf - Jeonghan could tell from the sound of Seungcheol’s quickened pulse, the subtlest rise in his eyebrows.

“Yeah,” Jeonghan had plodded on, bolstered by the way Joshua had been nodding in the slightest of ways, had been brushing his left foot against Jeonghan’s, “There’s a room on the second floor of this bar which no one really uses, there’s a bed there as well - left by the previous owner. He can crash for as long as he wants, can work at the bar too if he likes. Heaven knows we always need an extra set of hands.”

Mingyu’s gaze had flickered nervously between Seungcheol and Jeonghan - what Jeonghan had just done was extremely out of character, far too sincere and unprecedented to be anything close to his usual spiel; Jeonghan didn’t blame Mingyu for being shocked, wary.

But Seungcheol, sprawled right there on a hardwood table worse for wear, in a bar backroom stashed with beer crates and potion ingredients alike, his hair a matted wreckage, his lip still bleeding, had finally done something that knocked the wind completely out of Jeonghan.

He had _smiled,_ a careful little thing, an imponderable pull of lips, a soft flashing of teeth.

 _Breathtaking,_ had been the only word echoing along Jeonghan’s skittering thoughts.

“Thank you,” Seungcheol’s response had been more a whimper than a sigh of relief, an indication that Joshua’s magic had reached that stage where the recipient’s energies would be utterly depleted, where they would slip into a subconscious state until they gathered back their strength. _“Thank you.”_

And then, Seungcheol’s eyes had finally shut, sleep and exhaustion catching up with him at last.

Jeonghan doesn’t remember how long he stood there, staring blatantly, until Joshua had pressed a sweet kiss to his temple; had mumbled, “Let’s take him upstairs.”

\---

Morning comes in hesitant waves, the grey skies a remnant of the ravages of the storm. In the absence of sunlight, there is the wind again, winnowing its way through the cracks in their bedroom window, skirting past Jeonghan’s sleep-heavy eyelids.

When he wakes, the two spots beside him are empty, the sheets made and tucked into hospital corners (just the way Joshua likes it). There are the conspicuous sounds of bustling in the kitchen, pattering feet, the subtle metallic twang of utensils being moved around. The distinct scent of bread-in-toaster, coffee beans grinding, a heady concoction of brightness from Joshua’s makeshift herb garden right outside their kitchen window, flush with last night’s rain.

But there is also something else.

The sound of laughter, pristine and giddy. It’s symphony imperfect, yet so utterly fascinating.

_Cheol._

Jeonghan gets up faster than even his own vampire reflexes, throwing on a shirt at the speed of light. Outside, in the kitchen, where the source of all breathtaking sounds and scents converge, is what he’s simultaneously been afraid of and has _craved_ for what seems like an eternity.

Joshua is flipping omelettes in a skillet, dressed in his nightrobe still, the hair falling over his forehead almost obstructing the ridiculously fond look in his eyes. _Almost._

He is smiling, the force of its mirth nearly making the kitchen counter vibrate; a hint of a blush high and prominent on his cheekbones. Seungcheol leans on a kitchen cabinet right beside him - shirt discarded, only his thin vest stretching over taut muscle -wearing an identical radiant smile, whispering something that seems to be utterly delighting Jeonghan’s husband, making the latter suppress a giggle. Jeonghan feels too overcome and disorientated to make out what it is, even if his supernatural hearing isn’t quite immune to the sound.

The herb garden sways in the wake of Joshua’s joy - it always imbibes the essence of every emotion the witch feels, his magic infused in every branch, every root. A bird whistles outside, making this scene seem even more idyllic, even more picturesque.

Seungcheol laughs again, his eyes settling on the corner of Joshua’s bottom lip, and Jeonghan feels it tremble in his very bones.

“Oh there you are, sleepyhead,” Joshua is the one who notices him, god knows how long after he’s just stood there _staring._

Immediately turning off the stove and abandoning whatever it is he was turning around in the skillet, he walks over to Jeonghan, directs that radiant smile at _him_ before reaching up to demand a customary morning kiss. Jeonghan complies perhaps a little too hungrily, curling a hand around Joshua’s waist to pull him flush against his chest, pouring in every bit of desperation, every bit of blasphemous desire into their clumsy collision of mouths. 

When they part, Joshua is a little breathless, chest heaving up and down, heartbeat staccato. But the smile on his lips is steady and persistent, his eyes continuously crinkled with warmth.

“A little eager this morning, are we?” he murmurs, placing another gentle kiss to the tip of Jeonghan’s nose, but Jeonghan doesn’t say anything. He simply stands there and basks in it - basks in the way Joshua’s lips brush against his pale vampire skin, basks in the way Seungcheol is looking at the both of them with sparks in his unflappable gaze, that same intensity he had the night they first met him, that same intensity Jeonghan is too afraid to examine any further.

After a moment that seems to last far too long, Seungcheol straightens, walks over to the two of them with slow, deliberate steps. 

“Hi, Jeonghannie,” his voice is a tad raspy, perhaps still in the process of recovering from last night. “We made breakfast for you. Eat with us?”

“I…” Jeonghan trails off, suddenly at complete odds with the situation. His hands around Joshua’s waist slacken, but Joshua brings a palm to his left wrist, holding it in place with careful firmness. He squeezes it, his gaze boring into Jeonghan, nods so subtly that Jeonghan would have missed it if it weren’t for his supernatural vampire vision.

Jeonghan takes in Seungcheol’s ever-earnest eyes, aflame with unrestrained heat; his smile that is both indulgent and imploring, the planes of his chest that peek out from behind the flimsy vest, painfully emphasising everything Jeonghan cannot have. 

And Jeonghan gulps, trying to keep himself from shuddering all over.

“Okay,” he replies, and it sounds pathetically eager, even to himself. His (nonexistent) heart does another strange little shuffle under his sternum, which is _stupid_ because vampire hearts cannot physically beat, because vampires are supposed to be devoid of distinctly human sensations in every sense of the word, anatomically _and_ emotionally. But Jeonghan’s heart has been threatening to beat in his chest for a long time now, threatening to submit to the ordeal of….whatever this will turn out to be.

“I mean, I know you vampires technically don’t need to eat human food to survive,” Seungcheol is fully and completely grinning now, gums on display, nose scrunched up in that upsettingly adorable way that commonly occurs when he’s genuinely excited (Jeonghan hates that he’s noticed it so often), “But I just gave Shua-yah my best _gyeran-mari_ recipe, and you just _have_ to try it.”

Joshua’s giggle does slip out this time, his cheeks the shade of a delicate musk-rose. He squeezes Jeonghan’s wrist again, says, “It truly is something else.”

Jeonghan lets out a stream of breath he didn’t realise he was holding in, lets his shoulders sink in resignation. Once again, he is subjected to the combined, utterly terrifying onslaught of two delighted grins, two sets of eyes piercing through him, two sets of hands _hungering_ for his touch. Jeonghan feels so powerless he can barely stand still.

But, at the same time:

A latent warmth is spreading all across his body, right from his skull to the tip of his toes, rooting him to the spot, encasing him like the embrace of his favourite quilt - the very same quilt Seungcheol slept under last night. 

“Yeah, I bet it is.” Jeonghan murmurs in response, feeling the edges of his lips curve up into an involuntary smile. 

For once, for just this one morning, he decides to allow his (nonexistent) heart to _beat._ For just this one morning, after the storm has subsided, after the clouds have dispersed, maybe his heart can _exist._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> soooo idk what this is lmao? there will be one more chapter of this, which, if i get my shit together, should be done by next week.
> 
> holler at me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/mactsofservice) or [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/dykehearts)


	2. contra mundum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here they were, two old husbands, standing before a scruffy-haired, dirt-soaked werewolf who was smiling at them like they hung the moon, like they hung the entire _galaxy,_ and Jeonghan's hand had held on to Joshua's under the counter like it was a lifeline.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so....remember when i said that i'll post chapter 2 in a week? remember when i said this will only have 2 chapters? 
> 
> i lied and i'm terrible and this story is getting way out of hand than i originally envisioned ;___;

_ But I'm a fire and I'll keep your brittle heart warm, _

_ If your cascade, ocean wave blues come. _

_ All these people think love's for show _

_ But I would die for you in secret. _

_ The devil's in the details, but you got a friend in me _

_ Would it be enough, if I could never give you peace? _

**_-Taylor Swift, ‘Peace’_ **

The bar is busier tonight than it has been all week, bubbling over with the hum of careless laughter and careful debate, the clinking of glasses and the soft piano Jihoon has been playing all night.

Jeonghan’s senses are pulled in a million different directions, even if he’s only curled up in one distant corner of the room, in a deserted booth that gives him an excellent bird’s eye view of the entire establishment but keeps him safely ensconced away from everyone’s notice, away from the mortifying ordeal of social interaction. When the bar is like  _ this,  _ every bit of his supernatural vampiric reflexes are painfully amplified - tinnitus settles in his eardrums, his vision gets a little hazy with the constant assault of colours and shapes and sights, his nose gets clogged under the weight of a million olfactory sensations. 

There’s a reason vampires usually shun crowded places, keeping to themselves in their dark dreary dens. 

Though, ironically enough, that hasn’t stopped quite a few of them from frequenting this place, perhaps intrigued by its strange old covenless vampire proprietor who, stepping out of the norms of his species, chose to marry a witch, not just  _ a witch _ but  _ the High Witch Of Downtown Seoul. _ Or perhaps they simply enjoy the blood-infused cocktails Jeonghan specifically invented for this bar, the very same cocktail he is currently taking tiny sips from.

But it’s  _ okay, _ really. Jeonghan is okay with this - the overwhelming of his hypersensitive senses, the bustle, the cacophony. The people  _ too, _ even - but at least Joshua’s the one who takes on the larger brunt of dealing with them, mans the front counter with dazzling charm and approachability, always a smile stuck firmly to his lips. Jeonghan is much better off behind the scenes, is much better off at this secluded booth poring over the ledgers, balancing the checkbooks to make sure the business side of things is always running smoothly. 

“Heard our little wolfie got into yet another scuffle,” but someone joins his island of seclusion tonight, a voice with a familiar lilt, belonging to a familiar lean, wiry vampire who always has a peculiar knack of seeing through all of Jeonghan's carefully-honed defences. Possibly a by-product of knowing each other for more than a century. “Shua hyung seems to have patched him up pretty good, though.”

Xu Minghao beams at him as he settles on the leather couch on the other end of the booth, his cravat tucked skilfully under his starched collar. Everytime Jeonghan sees him, Minghao always chooses to dress like he's attending a black-tie event in nineteenth century Europe. Perhaps old habits die hard - Minghao had spent a significant amount of time travelling the western world a few centuries ago.

Jeonghan takes another sip of his cocktail, chooses his words carefully, especially considering Joshua's misgivings from the other night. Not that he doesn't trust Minghao wholeheartedly, but this is about  _ Seungcheol,  _ and neither him nor his husband would appreciate any slip-ups that could expose the werewolf to any more danger than he's already in.

"How'd you know?" is what Jeonghan settles on finally, hoping his tone is pitched neutral enough. 

On the other side of the bar, Jeonghan can see Joshua chuckling at one of the patrons - Seungkwan, an apprentice witch who's been far too eager to get in the High Witch's good graces. He never has to try too hard, though, considering how amenable Joshua always is to accepting new blood, how fiercely he loves nurturing fresh talent, shaping the next generation of elemental witches. Jeonghan's hearing picks up a funny anecdote about a failed potion-making experiment, and Joshua laughs again, giving Seungkwan directions on how to hone his art in that gentle honey-voice of his.

But the  _ little wolfie _ that is the subject of this entire conversation, the subject of Jeonghan's constant bevy of thoughts, also wars for his attention. Seungcheol hovers around the room, refilling glasses, making bright-eyed small talk with some of the regulars he's formed an affinity with, goes over to where Jihoon's hands are delicately maneuvering piano keys and whispers,  _ "play some Liszt next?" _

Jeonghan has to shut his eyes to tune it all out for a second, to keep his senses from going utterly haywire, to school the damned telltale shuddering of his nonexistent heart.

When he opens them again, resistance somewhat gathered, Minghao's grin has slipped into a knowing smirk, an odd glint in his eye.

_ "Wow," _ Minghao says, "You're pretty obvious, huh."

"Shut up," Jeonghan grumbles, slamming the ledger shut in indignation, sipping his drink almost mutinously.

But Minghao keeps smirking, folds his hands under his chin and leans forward.

"It's okay, hyung," he whispers conspiratorially, "Your secret's safe with me. Seoul's vampire community will never find out how terribly soft you are."

Jeonghan groans in protest, but Minghao just laughs, a high, musical sound.

"But to answer your earlier question, the reason I  _ know,  _ is because I know what happened the other night. Do you remember Junhui from my coven? Comes here sometimes to ogle at Jihoon hyung?"

Jeonghan is immediately intrigued, back ramrod straight.

"Yeah, I've seen him around. He keeps trying to buy Jihoonie a drink but Jihoonie always glares him down."

Minghao flashes another knowing, amused smirk, but it's briefer than the ones before. It quickly fades into a mask of seriousness, into a gravity Minghao only embodies when he's about to deliver less-than-savoury news.

"Junhui was there that night, running a routine patrol,” Minghao pauses, something inexplicable flickering in the depths of his eyes (perhaps just a trick of muted bar lighting). “Hapjeong-dong is  _ our _ territory and we protect it, you know? We make sure nobody causes trouble there. The transformation centre Seungcheol hyung goes to during full moons…"

"...is located merely two streets away from there, yeah I know." Jeonghan is nearly at the edge of his seat now, one hand gripping the burnished leather. He swallows past a sore spot in his throat, desperately trying not to lose his composure at the revelation that is on the tip of Minghao’s tongue.

Mingyu was the one who had set it up for Seungcheol, way back after Seungcheol first moved into the empty upstairs room atop the bar. Seungcheol had been so utterly lost and hapless, so clueless about how to navigate his way through the supernatural world, Mingyu hadn’t been able to resist the temptation to take him under his wing, to teach him how to endure werewolf transformations, the intricacies of pack politics, to find him a transformation centre which was both hygienic and inclusive in their approach. Seungcheol had taken to it all with a stunning resilience, diligently soaking up all the knowledge Mingyu had to offer, becoming a little less hapless as the months went by and a little more in control of his werewolf sensibilities. He never missed even a single full moon appointment with the specialists at the transformation centre, eagerly consenting to the suppressants, to the thing that keeps both the pain at bay  _ and  _ curbs the violence inherent to the wolf within him.

But to think that despite all of that, despite all the hard work and progress Seungcheol has put in, all the assiduous learning and unlearning, he’s  _ still _ not safe. He’s  _ still _ privy to the tyranny of…

“The Watch.” Minghao fidgets with the emerald-crusted ring on his forefinger, clears his throat, as if trying to frame the words as diplomatically as possible, “We’ve been hearing whispers for a while now - about how they’re getting out of hand lately, becoming more and more merciless. The present human administration...they’re doing nothing to stop The Watch from running rampant, from attacking and killing whoever they please. There’s whispers of new legislation being drafted too -legislation that would call for segregation once again, dividing all of us into separate silos, stifling our rights. But that night, Junhui was  _ there,  _ he saw proof of it with his own eyes.”

“What.” Jeonghan feels a recognisable panic unfurl in the pit of his stomach, the same panic he felt when that very first knock had sounded on his door the other night, “What did he see.”

Minghao is quiet for a moment, pinning Jeonghan with a look that betrays both remorse and ironclad will. He takes a deep breath, as if the words are heavy on his tongue, threatening to engulf him, threatening to upturn their world. 

Jeonghan’s grip on the leather couch is so infernally tight, his deceptively blunt nails are on the verge of tearing the whole thing apart.

“Werewolves, they- they’re extra vulnerable right after the full moon, easier to thwart in a fight.”

“I know  _ that!”  _ Jeonghan barks, the impatience and fear and agony all crashing onto the surface, betraying everything he’s desperately trying to keep in check.

Perhaps, Minghao gets it too. He uncouples his fingers from under his chin, reaches over to squeeze the one hand Jeonghan still has poised over the shut ledger.

“They could smell the  _ wolf _ on Seungcheol hyung from miles away,” Minghao’s voice is painstakingly fragile now, as if he’s stepping on eggshells, as if he wants to comfort as much as  _ warn _ with the tenor of his words. “They have advanced human tech now. Gadgets that can detect supernatural presence from miles away. It wasn’t difficult for them to find hyung.”

“Godfuckingdamnit! Cheolie is fucking  _ innocent!” _ Jeonghan is getting more and more agitated, his feet shaking with the force of his -  _ everything,  _ the avalanche of turbulent emotions that attack him from every direction. He can’t lose Seungcheol,  _ he can’t- _

“Hey, hey,  _ it’s okay,” _ Minghao leans forward, tries to funnel as much of his calming, settling energy onto Jeonghan as possible. Vampires aren’t as good at aura exchanges as witches are (they can barely manipulate the elements, being, you know, technically not really  _ alive),  _ but one vampire can still influence another’s mood if they are in close enough proximity, can project some of their neural waves onto the other, calibrating each other’s feelings.

“Junhui got to him in time,” Minghao says, and Jeonghan feels his breathing become more even, the paranoia in his veins slowly dissipating. Minghao is good at this; his neural waves an unexpected repository of calm.

“He got Seungcheol hyung to safety, made sure Seungcheol hyung would find his way to your apartment. And look at hyung now! He’s all good! It’s all good!”

Jeonghan can’t help but sneak another furtive glance at Seungcheol, now absorbed in conversation with Soonyoung, a shapeshifting hybrid who frequents the bar on Fridays, who struck up a quick and easy friendship with Seungcheol because of how genuinely affable he is. Seungcheol is taking his order, work apron betraying splodges of alcohol-stains and grime, is smiling broadly at something Soonyoung said, gums on breathtaking display. His hair is in disarray from his frequent habit of running his hands through it, and the unadulterated mirth in his eyes makes him  _ glow  _ from head to toe. A scraggly prince of the hinterland.

There is always something about Seungcheol - so pure and effervescent, so indubitably humble - that inevitably draws people to him. He’s been working at the bar for merely eight months and yet, is already a crowd favourite, is an object of unabashed awe for the faefolk who giggle in a corner every time he brings them their drink orders, is already their in-house pianist Jihoon’s closest confidante - the same Lee Jihoon infamous for being the most reclusive witch in downtown Seoul. 

Seungcheol has been through so much, being turned without his knowledge or consent, thrust into a world utterly alien to him. He has been ostracised from his family, from his old, human life; has been  _ attacked  _ by Watch multiple times, has been harassed by supernaturals who pick on lone wolves like him. And despite all of it, _ all of it,  _ he’s ineffable. He continues to be optimistic, sweet beyond measure, continues to stare coyly up at Jeonghan from between his eyelashes every time he’s begging for Jeonghan’s attention, continues to constantly gravitate to Joshua like Joshua is his north star.

Jeonghan never knows how to reconcile it all, how to reconcile  _ Seungcheol,  _ with every belief, every adage, every dictum he has internalised over centuries of his abominable existence.

“Yeah,” Jeonghan sighs into his cocktail, eyes downturned under the weight of his spiralling thoughts. “I just...I just want him to always be okay.”

It’s an excruciating confession, more honest than he ever allows himself to be. But Minghao has already read him like an open book, has already seen a glimpse of his blasted, bleeding (nonexistent) heart. There are no pretences anymore.

Minghao sighs too, sympathy etched into every inch of his face. He knows a thing or two about bleeding hearts too.

They have more in common than Jeonghan usually likes to believe.

“There’s no guarantee, there never is, you know that.” Minghao’s rings twinkle under the barlights, another smile crawling past his lips, though this one infinitely more resigned. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about it.”

Minghao throws Jeonghan another knowing look that travels between him and where Seungcheol is laughing at yet another one of Soonyoung’s jokes, then settling on Joshua, who has temporarily abandoned all polite conversation to gaze fondly at Seungcheol instead.

Jeonghan groans again, but before Minghao can offer another cutting remark, his efforts get foiled by the sudden presence of a tall, bouncy form towering over their secluded booth.

“H-hey Hao,” Mingyu stutters in a familiar lisp, a blush prominent on his cheeks (as it always is whenever Minghao is at the bar and Mingyu spends half his shift simply staring at him like a lovesick fool), “You’re not drinking anything! Can I take your order?”

Mingyu is shuffling from one foot to another, which is equal parts a nervous tic and his inability to keep all that  _ eagerness  _ contained within him, begging for release. His crush on Minghao has been as persistent as it is hopeless - the endogamic structure of Mingyu’s pack, the internal politics of Minghao’s coven, doomed to keep them apart - but that doesn’t mean Minghao is immune to his charms. 

No matter how much Minghao tries to deny it, there’s always that unmistakable colouring of his cheeks too (well vampires can’t quite physically  _ blush,  _ but there are obvious signs that do give them away), there’s always the hitch in his breath that only Jeonghan can hear.

“Just soju, thank you,” Minghao tucks a strand of hair behind his ear nervously, stares up at Mingyu with painfully  _ open _ eyes. 

Mingyu’s answering grin is so luminescent, it threatens to outlast the sun, to drown out everything else in the room. 

“Coming up right away Hao-yah! I’ll refill your drink too, Jeonghan hyung!” The shuffling of Mingyu’s feet gets even more enthusiastic, like he’s  _ truly _ vibrating from head to toe at a frequency that cannot be contained. “Oh, um also, Hao. I was thinking - ah, um - my shift gets over in an hour, could we… you know, um...?”

Mingyu trails off, biting his chapped lips and looking at Minghao with the most  _ adorably,  _ irresistibly imploring eyes. Even Jeonghan’s cold, rotten heart couldn’t have said no to _ that. _

There’s a pause, and a dozen emotions flicker through Minghao’s features all at once, as if he’s struggling against the shackles of his own consciousness (Jeonghan can relate to that feeling a little too much), but ultimately, in the flash of another millisecond, it settles into a warm smile - far, far different than every other type of smile he has aimed at Jeonghan tonight.

“I’ll find you, Mingyu-yah.” He says, impossibly tender, “We can go wherever you like.”

Mingyu looks like he’ll  _ explode _ right there and then, beaming so wide and happy that he almost shudders in the wake of it.

“So, you were saying?” It’s Jeonghan’s turn to smirk knowingly as Minghao watches Mingyu’s retreating form - scurrying away to put together their drinks - with affection evident in every breath.

Minghao turns to look at Jeonghan, blushes again (or at least, as much as vampires  _ can _ blush), fiddles with another one of his rings.

“I guess we both have things we want to protect, don’t we, hyung?” Minghao says, more restrained in inflection than everything else he’s said all night, that warm smile still curled around the corner of his mouth. “Question is, what are you going to do about yours?”

Without even another thought, Jeonghan’s attention again spills towards Seungcheol, now carrying a tray of drinks to a table across the room, biceps flexing in effort. As he sets the drinks down, he smiles that irresistible gummy smile once more, whispering a  _ “enjoy your night”  _ to the fae scattered around the table, flapping their gossamer fae-wings in delight. 

Jeonghan desperately tries to avert his gaze, tries to locate his husband instead, but when his eyes make their way behind the bar counter, Joshua is already staring back at him, as if catching Jeonghan right in the act. 

Jeonghan feels shame and embarrassment and a countless other mortifying emotions flood his heightened senses, wants to coil up and disintegrate right here and now, felled once and for all. But Joshua - perfect, wise Joshua, healer of things, Knower of things - only shakes his head. It’s a tiny gesture, but it indicates so much more, so much more that only their (metaphorically) telepathic bond built over years and years of companionship can parse out.

What Joshua means:  _ Hey, it’s okay, I see you. We’re in this together. _

What Jeonghan hears (his supernatural senses picking up every nuance, every vibrato, every amplitudinal frequency of the sound): “I love you, Hannie.”

\---

That first week after Seungcheol moved into the bar, he was always so terribly jumpy. 

Every sound would spook him, would make him withdraw unto himself, would make him shut his eyes and gasp. Every gesture of empathy from Joshua would make him utterly self-conscious, would cause him to dither and flounder a million times before accepting even as simple a favour as a new jacket, compensation for the one that got all torn up the night he first came to them.

“You’ve done too much for me already,” Seungcheol would tell Jeonghan and Joshua, unable to meet their eyes, fidgeting with the broken skin around his thumbnail, “I don’t know how to repay you.”

So much of Jeonghan’s seemingly infinite lifetime had been built on transactional reciprocity - giving, then taking in return; performing a favour, then collecting another; owing a debt, but making sure his debtor paid one too. Yet, watching Seungcheol like that, diffidently asking how he could repay the kindness they had so eagerly shown him, asking what he could do to even come  _ close _ to compensating for the value of Joshua saving his life, of Jeonghan offering him a livelihood, a roof over his head - it was uniquely disorientating. 

Jeonghan wasn’t used to every corner of his being screaming out with the need to  _ protect,  _ the need to  _ cherish,  _ the need to  _ hold on _ to this werewolf. This werewolf, who almost seemed to have materialised from another world, untainted by the malaise that comes with being supernatural for too long, untarnished by the horrors you see day in and day out, the constant quest for survival, the constant threat of human conquest. 

But in so many ways, Seungcheol had been tainted already. He was already unmistakably supernatural in both anatomy and instinct, already thrust into the midst of this unforgiving world where lone wolves like him barely scrape through, already a magnet for both foreseen and unforeseen danger.

And Jeonghan desperately wanted to help him. And wanted nothing in return. 

He wanted to help Seungcheol so viscerally and fundamentally, it humbled his centuries old disdain for emotional vulnerability, it threatened to kickstart his nonexistent heart.

(And, judging from the way Joshua always tutted whenever Seungcheol asked what he could do in return, judging from the way Joshua’s hands lingered the tiniest bit on Seungcheol everytime he would administer a healing spell on the werewolf, Joshua wanted to help Seungcheol as badly as Jeonghan did.)

“You don’t,” Jeonghan would reply, despite himself, despite the frankness of it threatening to annihilate him, “You don’t have to repay us. Just stay here. Stay safe.”

Seungcheol eyelashes would flutter in naked surprise, his mouth pulled into a tentative ‘o’, but his shoulders would melt a little, releasing its stiff self-consciousness. 

“Okay,” he would reply, still tentative but a tad breathless, a tad coy, “But I want to pay rent. You can deduct it from my salary every month.”

Joshua would click his tongue some more, but he would ultimately, after sharing a long look with Jeonghan,  _ smile _ \- a particularly buoyant smile he reserved only for special occasions, only for special people. 

Then, he would nod.

Months passed, and Jeonghan and Joshua did their best to initiate Seungcheol into the folds of this bleak, unrelenting universe. The bar helped, with the diverse demographic it often attracted, nudging Seungcheol towards getting out of his shell a little, towards interacting with the patrons, with other werewolves who also understood what he was going through. For the most part, the supernatural community (at least those who congregated at their bar) took to Seungcheol kindly - after all, it was hard not to be mellowed by the sight of Seungcheol’s delicate eyes, gloriously unkempt hair, the soft lilt of his voice. But there were dissidents too, as there always are when several species utterly incommensurable with each other are lumped into a singular broad sweeping category, are forced to coexist if only as a defense mechanism, if only to bear the brunt of a shared stigma, a shared marginalisation. 

And Seungcheol was a packless wolf thrown squarely into the deep, trying to carve a niche for himself in terrains torn by internal strife.

Vampires and werewolves routinely feuding to achieve utmost dominance over territories,  _ mugyo _ witches tapping into heathen energies strictly forbidden by the traditional  _ mu _ scrolls, commonplace reports of hybrids being kicked to the curb in distaste. And then, there were the Anti-Watch insurgent movements, constantly ebbing and flowing with the waves of time, resurging in a particular era, going completely quiet in another. The Watch's excesses were brutal, their casualties limitless, but the insurgents hadn't hesitated to fight back, despite not being unified enough to maintain their strongholds. Perhaps it was again that age-old internal strife, the inherent incommensurability between different supernatural species, which hindered them from truly working together against a common oppressor. Or perhaps, it was always their fate - they were destined to inevitably fall out with each other, species against species. 

("Our bar is different though," Joshua had once said, long ago when they first began thinking about establishing the place - a safe harbour for every supernatural being, regardless of genetic identity, regardless of coven, pack, circle or faction. "Our bar is for everyone. People  _ will _ get along, you'll see, Hannie!"

Jeonghan had scoffed back then, the idea so utterly alien and unimaginable. Vampires, werewolves, witches, hybrids, fae, all under one roof, and no in-fighting? Unfathomable.

Yet, as Joshua has been known to do, he proved Jeonghan wrong. Here they are today, proud longtime proprietors of the very same bar that has facilitated many an inter-species friendship, many an inter-species romance, for fifteen years and counting. Their own inter-species marriage of decades and decades standing as constant stalwart proof. 

Even after all this time, whenever Jeonghan gets oddly surprised at the sight of werewolf packs and vampire covens sharing drinks at the same table, Joshua throws him an all-knowing look that conveys,  _ I told you so.  _

Jeonghan never quite minds.)

This was no ordinary world as is, but for a complete newcomer - someone who's had to wrap his head around not just the physical manifestations of his newfound lycanthropy, of the emotional desolation of being completely cut off from his previous life - this was a reconfiguring of every truth he once held sacred, an overhauling of his fundamental ways of seeing, ways of being. 

There were those who sneered at Seungcheol’s lack of a pack, his lack of effortlessness with both maneuvering and controlling his werewolf reflexes. There were those that whispered about Jeonghan and Joshua’s obvious fondness for the werewolf, how quickly they took him in without assessing whether or not he could prove to be a threat, a _ liability. _

But Seungcheol continued to soldier on, ever the keeper of brave fronts, ever the most selfless and compassionate and purehearted of people, ever the most resilient soul Jeonghan has ever met.

When Seungcheol wasn't spending the nights working at the bar, serving up drinks, hauling boxes and crates in the backroom, cleaning up after closing, he was out with Mingyu, honing his newly acquired werewolf anatomy. What Mingyu could teach Seungcheol, Jeonghan or Joshua never could; and Mingyu - being the impossibly caring person that he was - was more than willing to impart all his knowledge. Right at the crack of dawn, they would disappear into the northern outskirts of the city - into the rocky, forest-shrouded landscapes surrounding Bukhan Mountain - and return only in the late evening, half covered in mud, half dotted with cuts and bruises, hair sticking up in all sorts of directions. Mingyu would always grin toothily though, his one sharp canine endearingly peeking out, "Cheolie hyung did  _ so _ well today!" 

Seungcheol would offer up only a tentative smile, right hand bashfully scratching the back of his head, but Jeonghan's chest would inexplicably fill with pride. A pride that only Joshua would be able to actually  _ articulate _ by saying, "I always knew he would", and proceeding to ruffle Seungcheol's already mussed up hair, making the werewolf blush profusely.

Jeonghan remembers one particular instance, a night when Seungcheol returned from his Bukhan excursion so late he almost missed his shift at the bar, the night before the first new moon of the Lunar calendar. 

They were severely understaffed - witches from all across the region had gathered at their humble establishment, desperate to get a glimpse of the High Witch of Downtown Seoul before he performed the first  _ gut  _ ritual of the season. The crowd was an annual occurrence, swarming like clockwork everytime Joshua was poised to perform an important ritual, spell, or any other public display of his magic. But what was  _ not _ so common, was Joshua’s uncharacteristic nervousness. 

Joshua’s eyes had been flickering to the bar’s doorway all night, utterly distracted as one excited witch after another (apprentice and seasoned alike) kept coming over to greet him, to ask him curious questions about the nuances of the ritual. Joshua's hospitable smile was as intact as always, the courtesy potent in his kind responses, but his left hand kept flexing and unflexing underneath the bar counter, away from plain sight. His stylish purple hanbok - designed to match the shade of his hair - glinted morosely (a manifestation of his mood, of his palpable anxiety) despite the added glare of the fairylights above them, the fairylights Mingyu had put up specifically for tonight's crowd before leaving for Bukhan with Seungcheol that morning. 

Joshua wasn’t able to centre himself  _ or _ his magic while he was worried sick about where Seungcheol was, and Jeonghan - though hardly magical both literally and figuratively - wasn’t able to centre himself either. But midnight was only a few more hours away, and if Joshua performed the  _ gut _ without regaining his composure, it could yield catastrophic results, could bring down unimaginable destruction. 

Jeonghan wasn't particularly skilled in describing the specifics of the  _ gut, _ barely as knowledgeable in witchcraft and it's ancient roots, but watching Joshua perform the ritual year after year had taught him a thing or two. He knew it was an extremely delicate process, essential for every High Witch to perform that time of the year so that magic could continue to flow freely in their entire community. Joshua calls it a zero sum game - you have to give to nature to be able to derive energy from it, you have to reach a point of equal give-and-take, an equilibrium that will continue to enable witchcraft to thrive, will continue to help witches harness the elements into their practice. 

The ancient shamans (from whom present-day witches descended) believed that the  _ gut  _ was a parlance with the spirits, a way of requesting their permission to practice magic in the mortal realm. While modern witchcraft theory has largely debunked the spiritual nature of that claim, has established more of a scientific explanation for it that talks about how a  _ gut _ is essentially a balancing act, an exchange of magical energy, a harmonising of the elements - at its heart, it still is about communicating with nature, about establishing a dedicated connection. Which was why, only the most powerful witches were equipped to carry out the ritual. Which was why, even the slightest mistake could put an entire species in jeopardy. 

Jeonghan had gone up to where Joshua was standing behind the counter, had intertwined his hand with Joshua’s, had leaned in to whisper, “It’s okay. He’s with Mingyu, he’ll be safe.”

But it hadn’t been enough of a reassurance. Joshua had still looked torn, his eyes betraying a staggering sense of concern and apprehension. Jeonghan hadn’t realised how attached his husband had gotten to the werewolf, how the very thought of Seungcheol in possible danger would upset him to  _ this _ extent. But who was he to judge, when his own mind was tormented by the exact same concern, the exact same apprehension?

_ What if Seungcheol was hurt again? What if he was bleeding out in an unknown ditch somewhere, and this time it’d been too late to- _

And then, it happened, like a spell in its own right. Jeonghan’s spiralling hysteria grinding to a halt as the bar door swung open at last, followed by the distinct sight of broad shoulders, scruffy hair falling-over-forehead.

Seungcheol had definitely looked more disheveled than he usually did after his Bukhan excursions - dirt and soil caking his boots, his trousers, his face - but he betrayed no serious injury. There were the usual scratches and cuts, his hands scabbed, his shirt ripped in places (Jeonghan had tried very hard not to fixate on the display of muscle underneath), but no actual bleeding. No mortal wound. 

Beside him, Jeonghan had felt every inch of stiffness in Joshua’s gait dissolve in a moment’s notice, the smile on his face finally turning into something genuine. Jeonghan’s own hands were trembling - with relief, with  _ distaste _ at the fact that he would feel  _ this much _ relief simply at the sight of a safe and unharmed Seungcheol. 

Seungcheol was walking over to them, steps oddly tentative as he pushed past the crowd of witches gathered near the counter, his smile as wide as it was shy. Mingyu was scurrying in behind him, looking a little roughed up himself, but nothing that seemed to have fazed him, nothing that seemed to have dented the perpetual optimism of his demeanour.

It was only then that Jeonghan noticed that one of Seungcheol’s hands were held behind him, away from view as if guarding an unimpeachable secret, as if caressing an invaluable treasure.

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” Seungcheol had said as soon as he approached the counter, staring up directly into Joshua’s eyes, then staring directly into Jeonghan’s, “But I’m glad I made it before the  _ gut  _ began.”

“We were worried about you,” Joshua, as always, was the one to verbalise the thought that was on the precipice of Jeonghan’s tongue, that was prominent in every breath shivering through his body. “Are you okay? Did something happen?”

“No,  _ no,  _ not at all,” Seungcheol vigorously shook his head, dislodging some of the dirt from his hair in the process, “Nothing happened! I just climbed a pretty steep hill today. Kind of got lost, kind of fell and got scratched up too - no,  _ please, it’s nothing!  _ Don't look so worried,  _ please _ \- Mingyu helped me find my way back! And I'm here in one piece, just on time to-"

"To what?" Jeonghan hadn't been able to resist the urge to interrupt his rambling, to navigate past all the platitudes to  _ truly _ pierce the heart of the matter. What had Seungcheol been doing on a steep, untraversed hill? Hadn’t Mingyu been focusing on teaching him how to control his strength? Why would that entail Seungcheol wandering off into potentially dangerous, life-threatening landscapes?

Seungcheol's smile had suddenly grown a touch sheepish, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed hard, fidgety and nervous.

"I, uh," he had fumbled, and under the bright fairylights, his blush had been startlingly evident, "I was reading some of the books Jeonghan lent me, about supernatural life? In them I saw...something about…certain herbs and flowers that can enhance a witch's energy and make them stronger to perform complicated spells?"

Seungcheol had continued to stare at the both of them from between his eyelashes, coy and distractingly handsome, even like this - half-battered, half-covered-in-grime. He cleared his throat, as if to stall a little, carefully formulating his next words.

"I, uh. I picked these for you, Shua."

And  _ finally, _ the secret he was so closely guarding, the treasure that had seemed insurmountable, not meant for Jeonghan’s eyes - Seungcheol's right hand slowly emerged from behind him, clutching a somewhat shoddily assembled bouquet of fuchsia-pink flowers, tied together with slender twigs. 

"Azalea blossoms," Joshua murmured with unrestrained awe, his eyes lustrous with unshed tears, his hands shaking as he accepted the bouquet. "You...how did you? They don't even grow during this season!"

"They do in a remote corner of the Bukhan valley," Seungcheol's smile had been slowly taking over his entire face, back to reflecting the charm and sincerity that was so characteristic of him, "That's why I had to get them for you, Joshua."

Azalea was the strongest flower a witch could have in their arsenal, its capacity to bestow magical energy immense and earth-shattering. Did Seungcheol even understand the implications of this? Did he understand what it meant to bring Joshua a bouquet of azalea flowers on the night of the  _ gut?  _ Did he know that a gesture like this meant so much more to a witch than to any other species, that it signalled the highest pledge of loyalty, an intimate symbol of courtship?

Jeonghan could only stare in complete and utter astonishment, rendered entirely speechless.

"I know this will be my first time seeing you perform the  _ gut,"  _ Seungcheol had continued, like he  _ did  _ understand the implications of what he had just done, like he had deliberately gone out of his way to do it. "But I still wanted to do something special for you, Shua."

"So you climbed a steep mountain and nearly got killed?" Jeonghan had blurted out, his mouth running miles ahead of him again, defying all restraints of composure. Joshua threw him a look which conveyed a mixture of _cut him some slack_ and _I like this boy_ ** _so_** **_much,_** _Hannie, please -_ yet Jeonghan wasn't able to stop himself, he simply _had_ to know. He had to know how one person could be so selfless and reckless at the same time, so incomprehensibly _good_ in every possible way.

"It was worth it, just for Joshua." Seungcheol's smile did not falter, sending Joshua into a raging blush, the shade of light crimson climbing up his cheekbones. Jeonghan had wanted to scream, to tear out that devilish unbeating muscle from his chest and stamp it to the ground, if only to stop it from trying to destroy him. If only to stop it from making him feel vulnerable and  _ exposed  _ like a raw nerve.

"Aw, Jeonghannie, don't be sad," Seungcheol had teased, and Jeonghan had felt the warmth of the tone resonate straight in his solar plexus, "I got you something too."

Seungcheol had dived into the pocket of his trousers and brandished a handkerchief tied up in a bundle. With deft fingers, he had softly undone it's knots, had let it unspool so it's contents would tumble out. 

"Persimmons?" Jeonghan stared at the sumptuous collection of orange fruit perched on the handkerchief in Seungcheol's hand, feeling a familiar warmth in his being that shouldn't have been there at all, yet was growing with every passing second. 

"I remembered Joshua mentioning you have a sweet tooth," Seungcheol had said bashfully, but still smiling nevertheless, "I thought you might enjoy them. They're ripe and wonderful, I nibbled on one on my way back."

Jeonghan had just stood there, disgustingly mesmerised, undone by one simple gesture, undone by the reverence with which Joshua kept smelling his bouquet of azaleas.

Here they were, two old husbands who had weathered a million storms, who had overcome a million obstacles, reduced to nothing but a pile of inexorable emotions that neither of them knew what to do with. 

Joshua's heart had beat so loudly it resounded in Jeonghan's hypersensitive eardrums, it felt like his  _ own  _ body was responding to a need repressed within him for ages and ages. Vampires cannot physically blush, yet they embody a semblance of blushing, a contraction of minute facial muscles - and Jeonghan, in that moment, had felt like his whole face would crumble, would chip away at every Darwinian strategy he had honed over the years.

Here they were, two old husbands, standing before a scruffy-haired, dirt-soaked werewolf who was smiling at them like they hung the moon, like they hung the entire  _ galaxy,  _ and Jeonghan's hand had held on to Joshua's under the counter like it was a lifeline.

_ I hate feeling this,  _ Jeonghan had furiously thought, hoping Joshua would read his mind, would hear it in their telepathic connection,  _ I hate it. _

Joshua had only smiled, his gaze piercing into Seungcheol's brown-flecked eyes. 

"Thank you so much, Cheolie," Joshua had said instead, "You are so good to us."

And it was Seungcheol's turn to blush now, finally, finally mirroring the very same state the two husbands were in. Finally becoming a part of their telepathic synchrony too.

\----

It’s usually past midnight when the bar winds up, drunk patrons dissipating one by one, a tired Mingyu hauling out those passed out in a corner and unable to drag themselves away on their own.

Except, tonight Mingyu has left early - disappearing hand-in-hand with Minghao as soon as his shift ended, so exceptionally bouncy and ecstatic that Jeonghan feared he would accidentally dent the bar’s hardwood flooring (Mingyu sometimes tends to be….unaware of how large he is, of how much strength he possesses). Jeonghan doesn’t always like to assume other people’s emotions, but he could tell Minghao seemed giddy too, smiling indulgently at Mingyu’s steady stream of lisp-heavy banter, staring at the werewolf with stars in his eyes.

Once the last customer for the night glides out the door and Jeonghan flips the sign to ‘closed’, Jihoon wraps up his playing, bids them all a murmured greeting and disappears as surreptitiously as he always arrives. He’s a little bizarre and mysterious, that Lee Jihoon, but which of them aren’t? On an unexpected existential level, Jeonghan can deeply relate to him.

And then, it’s just the three of them. 

Jeonghan, tallying their earnings for the night, balancing the registers. Joshua, clearing out half-consumed bottles of alcohol from tables and carefully arranging them back onto the shelves behind the counter. Seungcheol, mopping the floor, his shirt again discarded for the sake of convenience (Jeonghan has to once again forcibly look away from the sight of his exposed arms, a practice that is becoming disturbingly frequent).

It’s often like this at closing time, just the three of them in breathless tandem, establishing a quiet pattern, an effortless comfort from basking in each other’s personal space. Seungcheol always offers to help with the cleaning up despite however many times both Jeonghan and Joshua have insisted he doesn’t have to, that he can do it on a rotational basis with Mingyu. 

“I literally live upstairs,” Seungcheol always says, “It’s not like I have anywhere else to get to after my shift is over. But Mingyu does.”

And that right there is impenetrable logic, isn’t it? As pathetic and devastating the thought might be, it’s true that Seungcheol only has  _ this _ place now - his only abode and safe haven. This is his home and this is where he earns his wares. This is where he emerges from every morning and returns to every night. This is his respite and his torment.

But with this, comes another accompanying truth (a far more frightening one, if Jeonghan has to be the one to qualify it): 

Just like the bar is his only shelter and refuge, Jeonghan and Joshua are his only  _ people,  _ his only…

Benefactors? Friends? Companions?

What  _ are they _ to Seungcheol, really? 

Jeonghan doesn’t want to  _ consider _ it, doesn’t even want to contemplate the possibility that one day, Seungcheol might question the very comforting pattern they have easily established, the very telepathic synchrony they are slowly hurtling towards. That one morning, he might wake up and realise that Jeonghan and Joshua aren’t enough, that  _ this bar _ isn’t enough, that he is destined for so much more, for a far better life.

That he might feel claustrophobic, caught between two old husbands who can’t seem to stop orbiting him like desperate satellites, seeking his attention even when they’re trying their best pretending not to.

“Hey,” Joshua snaps Jeonghan out of that particularly despondent train of thought, appearing beside him at the cash register, “You seem awfully subdued tonight. Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Jeonghan sighs, leaving the word suspended mid-air between them, letting it simmer for a minute. “Just, thinking about something Minghao said earlier.”

And like the turncoat it is, his gaze settles on Seungcheol once more - on his sinewy arms gripping the handle of the mop, on the rich, mellow tenor of his voice as he hums along to the old timey ballad resonating from their vintage jukebox (he always likes putting on music when he cleans up). His brows are screwed up in concentration, fixated on a particular stain he’s vigorously trying to wipe away, but there’s a soft, satisfied smile on the corner of his mouth, supple and heartstoppingly sweet.

“Ah, I see.” Joshua whispers as he follows Jeonghan’s line of sight, visible recognition dawning on him. He immediately tangles his left hand with Jeonghan’s right, bringing their joined hands to his lips for a lingering butterfly-kiss. “It’s nothing bad, is it?”

Jeonghan is silent for a minute, savouring Joshua’s gentle reassurance, sifting through his congealed mess of mortifying emotions to pick out the exact one he wants to articulate. 

Minghao was right. There truly was no guarantee that Seungcheol will ever be wholly and completely protected, even under the wardship of Jeonghan and Joshua, even under the haven that they have fashioned this bar into. But did that mean they were forever vulnerable, forever susceptible to downfall? Did that truly mean there was nothing to be done? No recourse at all?

_ What if we tell him, _ Joshua had suggested the other night, heartache written in every breath.  _ What are you going to do about yours? _ Minghao had asked just a few hours ago, his smirk both a challenge and a beacon of empathy.

Jeonghan leans in to kiss Joshua on the edge of his cheekbone, exhaling a breath he didn’t realise he was holding in, slowly gathering his courage. Joshua lets out a satisfied gasp, but he continues to swing their joined hands back and forth, a reminder that he’s not going to let Jeonghan distract him so easily, that he’s still waiting on an answer.

“I don’t know,” is what Jeonghan eventually settles on, giving in after all. It’s technically not a lie. “He mentioned something about new anti-supernatural legislation...but I just-”

“Really?” Joshua prods on, when Jeonghan trails off midway. “Are you considering it? Joining the insurgents?”

Jeonghan makes a noise at the back of his throat that’s part groan, part whimper of sheer horror. Now  _ there’s  _ a road he never wants to go down again, a possibility he had not imagined and never wants to even remotely deliberate on, not again. Joshua’s assumption isn’t entirely out of the blue, Jeonghan can see how he made that inference, but it is nevertheless utterly unnerving. Another layer of detritus in his congealed mess of emotions, buried so deep within that it never has and never will see the light of day.

But he’s soon heroically rescued from answering that question - from offering a denial, from exposing the  _ real  _ subject of his apprehensions (Seungcheol’s wellbeing, of course) - by who else but the werewolf himself, mop abandoned in favour of gummy-smiling at the two of them like they’re the most fascinating creatures in the world.

“You know, that’s my favourite song,” Seungcheol says, wiping his hands against his apron and walking over to the counter. And Jeonghan suddenly, crudely realises that the song on the jukebox has changed, has progressed into a far slower, far more romantic ballad. Jeonghan vaguely recognises it from the soundtrack of a drama he watched a few years ago (no one has to know that he would only watch it in secret, whenever Joshua was in his workroom brewing his potions or aligning his herbs). “And it’s time we took a break anyway. Would you dance with me?”

Almost instantaneously, a heady crimson blush erupts along the line of Joshua’s cheeks, rendering him even more sublime than he already is, with his purple hair swishing over his forehead and his deer-shaped eyes blinking demurely. Jeonghan feels his own cheek-muscles contracting in the mimicry of a vampire-blush, perfidiously giving him away. His non-existent heart almost seems to mock him for being so  _ weak, _ for being so easily perishable under the onslaught of Choi Seungcheol’s tender eyes.

“I...I…” Joshua stutters, his hand tightening around Jeonghan, his teeth jutting out to worry at his bottom lip, “I don’t dance.”

Seungcheol chuckles, the sound so  _ exhilarating  _ that it echoes along the expanse of their empty bar, filling up all its cracks, dousing it in unrestrained warmth and guilelessness and all things good and pure and pristine. It feels like an anomaly, a rare pearl housed in an oyster shell that is so hardened it has let nothing but darkness and disuse penetrate it, has forgotten what true virtue looks like. 

“You don’t need to know  _ how _ to dance, silly.” Seungcheol says, his voice steeped in carefree mirth, so at odds at everything Jeonghan has been plagued with all night, so at odds with the gravity behind what Joshua and him were discussing barely a minute ago. But that’s the very essence of Choi Seungcheol, isn’t it? A rare burst of vivid colour amidst a barren, desolate landscape. “It’s just us. We can just move the way we want to move.”

Jeonghan hears Joshua catch his breath beside him (he curses his supernatural hearing again for never shutting the fuck up, for never letting him miss even the most minuscule of nuances like that). He watches Joshua’s startled half-giggle, watches the blush on Joshua’s cheeks extend to the tips of his ears. Watches Joshua finally emerge from behind the counter to accept the hand Seungcheol has extended towards him, watches them both make their way to the empty space at the very centre of the bar, facing each other, bodies mere centimetres apart. 

Jeonghan feels utterly deranged, like someone just sent an endless series of electric shocks through his nervous system. The absence of Joshua’s hand in his - that spot Joshua was gripping mere seconds ago, was holding onto like it was his very sustenance, the most intimate site of connection - carries the weight of a million boulders pressing against him, threatening to tear him to shreds. He is  _ not _ equipped to handle this, the seizing of his stomach at the way Joshua is blinking up at Seungcheol, their hips perfectly coordinated; the way a stray spark of green erupts from Joshua’s index finger, like it only does when he’s too exuberant to contain the abundant magic within him. 

Jeonghan turns around, his chest heaving and falling in frantic motion, convulsed under a longing he cannot name, a suffering that he doesn’t know how to get rid of, no matter how much he tries.  _ He can’t do this, he can’t- _

“Hey, Jeonghannie.” And there it is again,  _ that voice.  _ His heroic saviour, precious pearl in an impenetrable oyster shell.

_ Choi Seungcheol.  _

“Aren’t you gonna dance with me too?”

Jeonghan’s head jerks up at lightning speed, his nonexistent heart  _ clamouring  _ in his chest, chafing against his sternum so viciously that he is convinced  _ this time _ it truly will rupture out of his body, will scatter its unholy remains all across the bar-walls.

Slowly, excruciatingly, he turns around - because what else can he do, really? At this point, it’s all his traitorous reflexes controlling him, he has lost all his free will and is utterly at the mercy of this scruffy-haired werewolf.

Seungcheol’s gummy smile is _ blinding,  _ so saturated with blatant sincerity that all Jeonghan can do is gape open-mouthed; first at Seungcheol, then at his extended hand, then at the other hand he has wrapped around Joshua’s waist, and then, finally, at his utterly besotted husband.

For a moment that seems to stretch out for eternity, Joshua pins him with a stare that continues to speak volumes, that continues to cajole: _I like this boy_ ** _so_** **_much,_** _Hannie, please…please say yes..._

And Jeonghan sucks in a jagged breath, curses at everything that has lead him to this moment, curses at the way his vampire-blush is absolutely  _ refusing _ to go away. Cursing at the undeniable warmth that once again envelopes him when he finally takes Seungcheol’s hands, feels the calluses of his palms against his own. Cursing at the way Seungcheol’s grin brightens at this one simple gesture of reciprocation from Jeonghan. Cursing at his nonexistent heart, for wanting to exist, for wanting to be held and treasured as Seungcheol pulls him to the dance floor too, as he draws both him and Joshua so close to himself that they’re all tangled into an interminable knot, all three of them.

As the music swells, reaches a crescendo, Seungcheol attempts to spin Joshua around, ending up in a mess of uncoordinated feet and a near-fall. Seungcheol catches him though - with masterful alacrity - holds him upright while never once loosening his grip on Jeonghan’s waist. 

_ “Oh,”  _ whispers an utterly awestruck Joshua, much to Seungcheol’s evident delight, his grin expanding, expanding, expanding until it turns into the most sickeningly adoring thing Jeonghan has ever laid eyes on.

_ “Oh,”  _ thinks Jeonghan, as that delighted, sickeningly adoring grin then settles on Jeonghan, their faces so close that Jeonghan can count every freckle, can count every pore on Seungcheol’s nose. 

And  _ there it is, _ as evident as a raw, exposed nerve, as evident as every other mortifying feeling Jeonghan has experienced from the moment he met Choi Seungcheol.

_There's no more_ _running from it._

But Jeonghan suspects it’s too late now. He couldn’t run even if he tried. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i apologise once again for being utterly incapable of writing things that are short...i WILL end this with just one more chapter i promise :(
> 
> yell at me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/mactsofservice) or [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/dykehearts)!


	3. where the sea sleeps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And for just this once, Jeonghan is powerless to deny his own nonexistent heart, the root of all his dilemmas, but perhaps, also his greatest asset.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from the day6 song of the same name.
> 
> to take in the full experience of this chapter, or rather, this fic as a whole - [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/36fzZ1LipMlbhuDK3W2NPn?si=Ow0QLHGxSJGsAch1HylM5g) is the playlist for it.

_“The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell. Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time.”_

_-_ **_Richard Siken, Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out_ **

  
  
  


It's rare for Jeonghan to receive an actual complaint from a neighbour, so when the call comes early at nine am (well, early for Jeonghan, at least; Joshua has been up and about since the crack of dawn, watering his herb garden, drawing up lesson plans for his weekly tutorials with apprentices) - it's bizarre, to say the least. 

Unlike the cosy (yet plush) little apartment building Jeonghan and Joshua live in - which has a more... _human_ demographic than any other place Jeonghan has called home - their bar is located squarely in the midst of the most unsuspecting Hongdae alley, an area densely populated with supernaturals of all shapes, sizes, varieties. It was built that way by design, of course, the latitude and longitude chosen with the utmost care, the area rigorously mapped out and surveyed, a corner of the world where _truly_ no supernatural outcast would feel like one. 

The cramped, dilapidated structures around their humble Hongdae establishment is occupied by a coven of elusive vampires who like to be left more to their own devices than anything else, who show up at said humble establishment every other night for a blood-infused cocktail or two, nod a half-hearted greeting at Jeonghan and then disappear in under an hour. It's a nice enough arrangement, really - they like the bar, and Jeonghan likes them (especially Joohyun, the oldest, who glares darkly at every man that crosses her path, but only as a long-inculcated defense mechanism). In all the years since they've co-existed peacefully, their coven has hardly expressed discontentment with even a single aspect of Jeonghan and Joshua’s ownership of the bar, which is a significant achievement, considering the coven hardly mingles with anyone outside their very firm inner circle.

In return, Jeonghan and Joshua have always striven to show them the utmost respect, even if that sometimes meant...indulging Seulgi’s impassioned arm-wrestling matches and drinking games with any unsuspecting werewolf who becomes her chosen victim for the night. Thankfully, it never aggravates into actual physical combat, though sometimes it’s obvious how Seulgi is all-but-willing to add that final ounce of fuel into fire, wants to watch the whole world burn in flames.

And yet, there it is, a call from Sooyoung, another member of the coven Jeonghan may or may not have a fondness for, sharp at nine am when Jeonghan is barely coherent enough to stumble out of bed. 

"Pipe broke," her voice cracks a little on the other end of the phone, the reception erratic, "Think your upstairs bathroom is flooding. Would have called wolf boy but he's not home."

 _Of course,_ Jeonghan realises a tad belatedly. Seungcheol is probably off to one of his daily Bukhan excursions with Mingyu, scampering around yet another steep hill to test out the entire compass of his werewolf senses, plucking the occasional mountain fruit and flower for Jeonghan and Joshua (which has somehow become a strangely common occurrence since the night of the _gut)._

 _Of course_ he's not home.

No one else has the spare key to the ramshackle apartment above their bar other than Jeonghan. Not even Joshua, who always prefers to relinquish all of the bar’s logistical responsibilities to him, citing _“you’re the brains between the two of us, Hannie”_ as the primary excuse. Jeonghan disagrees, knowing full well just how much more intelligent Joshua is than Jeonghan can ever be, knowing full well the entire ambit of his skill with not just magic, but also with deduction, with assessing situations. But he never openly refutes his husband, never actually _minds_ handling the logistics despite pretending to complain about being taken for granted just because he used to be a scholar once upon a time, when he was still human.

In reality, being the brains to Joshua’s brawn makes him feel useful, makes him feel _wanted._

He knows he can never do what Joshua does, as _proficiently_ as Joshua does. But at least he can be his husband's humble bookkeeper, a custodian of his wishes, a fulfiller of the duties that preserve the balance of their tenuous universe.

“I’ll take care of it,” he rasps out on the phone in his still-sleepheavy voice, “Thanks for letting me know, Sooyoung-ah. Sorry for the inconvenience caused.”

“Whatever,” Sooyoung mutters, but there is the slightest betrayal of a _soft spot_ in her exasperated groan. “Just fix it.”

With that, the receiver clicks unceremoniously, leaving Jeonghan with a startled little smile and an even more startling sense of empathy for Sooyoung and her delightful little coven.

Jeonghan makes a mental note of buying them all a round of his latest blood-infused cocktail invention the next time they show up at the bar. A compensation, of sorts, but mostly just a show of solidarity.

\---

The bar almost seems unrecognisable when it's like this - the polar opposite of the bustle and commotion of its busiest nights.

Sure, the quieter, more deserted atmosphere is far more...amenable to Jeonghan’s hypersensitive hearing, but he still oddly misses the noise as he climbs up the stairs to where Seungcheol lives out his days and nights, the snug bedroom-and-bathroom arrangement nestled atop Jeonghan and Joshua’s humble Hongdae establishment. He can’t help but marvel at how surprisingly clean Seungcheol keeps the place, the staircase-railing gleaming despite it being rather worse for wear.

But he hears the gushing of running water before he even properly unlocks the door - that damned supernatural hearing of his at fault once again - and sure enough, it's _everywhere._ Rivulets spilling into the living room, weaving their way around the base of Seungcheol’s neatly-made bed, around the one rickety wooden cupboard on the other side of the room, around the legs of the study table that sits right beside the door. 

It looks like the second coming - an ancient land submerged in reckoning. Though, the distinct stench of blocked drainpipes is a crude awakening, a potent reminder that this is far from a romanticised apocalypse.

Once Jeonghan tiptoes over to the bathroom, trying his best to keep the hem of his trousers from getting wet, the punctured pipe isn’t difficult to spot, even past the steadily rising puddle of foul-smelling water currently flooding every inch of the bathroom floor. 

Jeonghan is no skilled plumber, but he _does_ know his way around a wrench, around a leaky vessel or two. After all, he’s been alive to witness nearly a hundred and fifty year’s worth of innovations in drainage and sanitation, has lived through bare-bones sewerage systems to complicated modern-day contraptions. Contrary to popular belief, he _can_ summon up his expertise when the situation demands it, he _can_ be an active Solver of Problems too, not simply a passive bystander while Joshua carries out all the crisis management. 

With a little heaving and a little more slinging, he successfully plugs the leak, puts careful industrial tape around it that would keep the water at bay until he can hire an actual professional to replace the pipes and permanently repair the damage. 

For now, at least, this will do.

The water has slipped into too many crevices for it to spittle out on its own, but fortunately, Seungcheol truly is the very epitome of cleanliness and hygiene. It doesn’t take Jeonghan long to rifle through a bathroom cabinet and locate a mop, to carefully scourge every flooded surface with a liberal dollop of cleaning fluid. For a temporary millisecond he wishes Joshua could be here to magick away all the filthy, drainpipe water, instead of him having to physically scrub away every droplet of it (Jeonghan’s active initiative-taking lasts for only so long), but at least he has his vampiric speed to help him along. At least, it doesn't take more than an hour to get the whole place back to looking like the way it was, though albeit a bit mustier than before.

Once the last rivulet of water slithers away and his job truly _is_ done, Jeonghan sinks into Seungcheol's surprisingly comfortable bed, promising himself he’ll only stick around for five more minutes, only until he can gather his breath and make his way back to his apartment. Joshua is off conducting his customary High Witch business (tutoring his apprentices, navigating the magical politics of the witchcraft side of their nebulous supernatural community), but he had promised to be home by lunch, and Jeonghan had planned to cook him something nice. Not that Jeonghan considered himself an accomplished cook - having given up on anything but blood and the occasional human snack or beverage ever since he embraced the vampiric lifestyle - but he always tried his best for Joshua, always tried to take care of him as much as he took care of Jeonghan.

But Jeonghan can’t help but lie here a little bit longer regardless, languishing in the surprisingly comfortable mattress Seungcheol had acquired with his very first earnings ( _“A home isn’t a home without a bed you can sleep soundly in,”_ Seungcheol had explained with another one of his gummy smiles after he first made the purchase, Joshua staring up at him with a fondness so profound, it had made Jeonghan want to dig a hole in the ground and collapse into it immediately). 

Jeonghan can almost imagine it - Seungcheol sprawled under the same covers he’s currently lying on top of, exhausted from a long shift, from a ruthless full moon, from the constant dedication he puts into every single thing he does. Seungcheol, sans his shirt once again, tousled hair fanning out against the periwinkle-blue pillowcase, chest rippling with light snores, mouth pulled into a serene pout. 

The very thought itself is _scandalous._ The most heinous, disgraceful aberration, worthy of the very seventh circle of hell.

What right does Jeonghan have, imagining Seungcheol in bed like that? What right does Jeonghan have, _fantasising about_ Seungcheol in bed like that? 

Hadn’t one night of it been enough? Hadn’t one simple taste of the blasphemous torture that is Seungcheol curled up between him and Joshua, burrowed against Jeonghan’s chest, one arm caressing Joshua’s slender frame, been enough?

Who is he to _continue_ to chase that fantasy? Who is he to continue to _want, want, want_ and always keep _wanting?_

Jeonghan gets up with a jolt, desperately searching for a distraction, for an escape from the prison of his abominable mind. He’s overstayed his welcome anyway, has already done his duty as the resourceful landlord, as the solver-of-problems. 

He has cleared out the stench and spillage from Seungcheol’s broken pipe. It’s time he cleared the stench that comes from _within,_ that has mercilessly haunted him since the moment he laid eyes on the scruffy-haired werewolf.

He sighs, making his way over to the door again, reaching for the jacket he had discarded on the door-handle before attempting to perform his plumbing miracle. He’s about to flee once and for all, is leaning down to fasten an untied shoelace, to tuck the ends of it beneath his heel, and then-

_No, it can’t be._

_That can’t-_

There, tucked right underneath the hind-leg of the wooden study-table that lies just adjacent to the doorway of Seungcheol’s humble Hongdae bartop abode, slightly soggy from the drainage water that has permeated through it-

A terrifyingly familiar bright orange sheet of paper.

A sheet of paper Jeonghan hasn’t seen in _years_ and yet, it feels like slow poison trickling down his throat, memories he has suppressed and internalised for heaven-knows-how-long _assaulting_ him, rubbing fresh salt into old wounds. Jeonghan had vowed to never go back to this, had vowed never to lay eyes on that particular brand of bright orange pamphlet ever again-

And now?

 _Fuck._ It can’t be, It can’t-

And yet, when Jeonghan picks it up, there’s no denying it - the big, bold lettering brutally conspicuous, proudly declaring everything Jeonghan has been afraid of.

**_COME, JOIN THE INSURGENCY!!_ **

_Are you tired of being pushed around and mistreated, simply because of who you are? Are you tired of living in the shadows, never raising your voice despite the injustices that have been done to our community?_

_Then the Insurgency is waiting for you._

_The Watch’s tyranny cannot go on any more. Humans can no longer pass their archaic laws and keep us away from our basic rights. We must all rise up, together._

_Come join the movement, the time is now._

**_Strategy meeting:_ ** _7pm, Saturday, Mapo District_

_Contact Jeon Wonwoo to confirm your participation._

Jeonghan cannot believe his eyes.

Does Seungcheol even know the full extent of the implications this one bright-orange pamphlet comes with? Does he know what that call to action is asking him to do? Does he even _comprehend_ all the risks, all the dangers, all the torment?

It’s easier to contemplate the possibility that perhaps Seungcheol chanced upon this pamphlet by accident, that he picked it up not knowing what it might entail, what it is actually about. Despite the months Seungcheol has spent reading the books Jeonghan routinely supplies him with, the hours he has spent prancing around with Mingyu, learning the ins and outs of his lycanthropy and of werewolf pack dynamics, he still _is_ a fledgling. A graceless novice caught in a world far more complicated than he can imagine. 

He can’t possibly know, he can’t-

But another, more potent possibility battles with Jeonghan at the back of his mind.

The possibility that Seungcheol _does_ know what this is, is an active participant in what this is. The possibility that Seungcheol voluntarily sought the insurgency out, collected the pamphlet on purpose, made a conscious decision to actually attend the damned strategy meeting.

“Hey, Jeonghan-ah, didn’t know you would be here,” comes a sudden, yet utterly familiar voice, cutting through Jeonghan’s frightening revelation, through all the worst-case-scenarios spinning in his head, “Mingyu wanted to go see Minghao so we got back from Bukhan early today.”

And it is the most brutal form of torment, turning that poison in his throat into something fatal and inescapable.

The last thing he needs is _this,_ to not only be confronted by the implications of this pamphlet, but by Seungcheol _himself,_ whose tender eyes are constantly Jeonghan’s undoing.

With a deep, ragged intake of breath, Jeonghan turns around, facing a Seungcheol who is still dripping in sweat and grime, who came back far too early from his daily Bukhan expedition, whose smile is as breathtaking as it was that very first night Jeonghan met him. 

“Wh-where did you get this, Cheol?” Jeonghan manages somehow, his voice unrecognisably small in a way it rarely is. The hand gripping the pamphlet is shaking, no matter how hard he tries to keep it under control. It feels like the sheet of paper is burning a hole into his impenetrable vampire skin, as fatal as a silver bullet aimed at his nonexistent heart.

Seungcheol’s smile slips away in an instant, confusion and alarm clouding those _eyes_ of his, his mouth dropping open in surprise.“I can explain-”

“No, no, you cannot,” The tremor in Jeonghan’s hand spreads to his entire body, twists his mouth into an unsavoury, disgusting caricature of its true self. He _despises_ showing weakness like this, but right in this moment, he cannot help it. He is _furious_ and helpless and governed by a dread and desolation he thought he got rid of years ago, but apparently he _didn’t,_ because it’s here now, as poignant and debilitating as ever. 

_Fuck,_ he thinks. _Fuck._

“You can’t join the insurgency, you can’t-” He is breathing heavily too, his breath coming in wisps and rasps.

“Jeonghan, _please_ just listen.” Seungcheol looks both stricken and determined in equal measure, his mouth still slack, but the set of his shoulder suddenly incredibly firm. He extends a hand - as if to comfort Jeonghan, to reassure him - but Jeonghan can’t _bear_ to be touched by Seungcheol right now. He knows he’ll fall again, back into this ceaseless trap of longing and surrender.

But this is different. This can’t...he can’t give in-

“No, Seungcheol.” He can’t do this anymore. He needs to get out of here. “I think we’re done here.”

“Jeonghan, no-” The pain in Seungcheol’s voice is _palpable,_ but Jeonghan has no courage or strength left within him to reach out, to actually explain why this is happening, why this is so catastrophic.

He tries to avoid Seungcheol’s eyes as he manouvers past the werewolf and heads out the door once and for all, but his damned supernatural senses notice Seungcheol’s extended hand nevertheless, still suspended in mid-air, still poised to comfort Jeonghan.

Jeonghan shuts his eyes to keep the tears at bay as he barrels down the stairs. He knows what he did here is irreparable, has consequences that are far-reaching, that extends to Joshua as well, but can you blame him? Can you blame him when the wounds go so terribly deep?

After all, he thinks, there are some leaks that can never stay plugged.

\---

_Kim Sojung._

He hasn’t allowed himself to recall that name in years, has kept it shoved down in the most desolate parts of his soul-

But now, it is inevitable. 

It all comes pummelling back, nearly tearing his consciousness into half:

The first time he met Sojung - almost a century ago, long before Hong Jisoo was ever an entity in his life - attempting to spur her lacklustre audience into a burgeoning resistance, railing against the excesses of the Human National Assembly. It was somewhere in Hongdae too, not far from where Jeonghan and Joshua’s present bar is, an alleyway frequented only by the local vampires, where inter-coven mixers were a regular occurrence. 

Except, at _this_ particular mixer, Sojung was addressing the crowd, was being met with a chorus of groans as she elaborated on the need to protest the newest discriminatory human-crafted legislation (a bill that proposed separate public restrooms for those with supernatural blood). She was talking about the need to band together, to involve other supernatural species in their fight _too,_ to picket the National Assembly (peacefully, of course - she was never once in favour of violence) until they gave into the supernatural community’s demands.

The insurgency was far from a singular, organised federation back then, more like dispersed outbursts of rebellion that hardly ever gathered steam. There was no uniting cause, no prevailing solidarity (only a shared ostracism), no factions, no leaders. Sojung had been one of the firsts - a progenitor of a movement that was far bigger than her, the scale and consequence of which even she did not understand. No one had taken her seriously that night at the alleyway, and no one would, for a long long time.

But Jeonghan had been there, had hung onto every word of her impassioned speech with rapt attention, had seen the distinct flicker of revolution in her eyes. _She’s special,_ Jeonghan had thought. _She will change the world someday._

"I want to help," is what he had said instead, approaching her after she concluded her address, after her not-so-captive audience sauntered away with muttered complaints in search of the nearest blood bank.

She had smiled, reticent yet spirited, a heady elixir that rooted Jeonghan to the spot, that made him want to stick around for as long as he possibly could. To think her optimism was unscathed despite the air of nihilism and disinterest her speech had been met with, to think she continued to have it in her to greet Jeonghan like an immediate compatriot, an immediate part of her inner circle, handing him the first set of orange pamphlets Jeonghan had ever held, asking him to help distribute them - it had _mesmerised_ Jeonghan. 

For months, they had campaigned together, travelling all across the country to drum up enough support for their cause so they could picket and petition human policymakers. Sojung was endlessly charismatic in her impromptu speeches, in her door-to-door negotiations with as many supernaturals as she could find - be it vampires, or any other species - was resilient despite the initial resistance and apathy she encountered. Jeonghan was there too, her unassuming right-hand-man, her sometimes-lover, sometimes-collaborator, her everlasting companion and friend. 

Ever since he had been turned, Jeonghan had internalised a self-loathing so _acute_ he never felt like his life could be _worth_ something. He had been convinced that this eternal savagery he did not sign up for would consume him from within someday, would doom him to an existence of aimlessly lurking in the dark and amounting to nothing more than a grotesque predator. But Sojung had given him a _purpose,_ had mobilised whatever modest skills he had into something genuinely meaningful, an enterprise fighting for the greater good, for the ultimate welfare of countless others like them.

Jeonghan did not have half the magnetism Sojung possessed, but what he _did_ have was the scholarly experience from his once-human life. Before he was cruelly turned, he used to teach at a human-only university - had never, in his cushy mortal stratosphere, even realised the privilege he’d had, the divisiveness his own workplace had perpetuated. The universe had a cruel sense of irony, indeed, transforming him into the very thing he once went to great lengths to remain unaware of, thrusting him into Sojung’s ambit, whose entire lifeblood had been her advocacy for supernatural-inclusion, supernatural-equality. 

But with Sojung, he finally knew what he could do, what he was good for, what he could _dream_ of. 

He read up extensively on the history and ethnography of various supernatural species, wrote orange pamphlet after orange pamphlet full of calls to action, manuscript after manuscript on how segregation of the supernatural is harmful to the very essence of species evolution. 

“You’re so brilliant, Jeonghannie,” Sojung would say with a kiss atop his forehead, would immediately start strategising on how to get Jeonghan’s writing to reach the maximum number of people, humans and supernaturals alike. And in those moments, Jeonghan would feel like _he_ could be something special too. _He_ could change the world someday too.

In just three years, Sojung had gathered a steady following, had built a nascent yet thriving enterprise. It became cause for concern for a lot of humans, became a point of unification among even those supernaturals who had previously been indifferent. It was in the newspapers, it was the subject of heated conversation in close-knit networks (human and supernatural alike), it was in displays of public hoardings, it was in Jeonghan’s manuscripts being disseminated with startling frequency. 

But here’s the thing about resisting authority - more often than not, it comes with devastating casualties.

Dissent is toppled more quickly and effectively than authoritarian regimes are.

On the night before Sojung had been planning a big important delegation to the National Assembly, intruders broke into her home. Intruders, with bright red Watch insignia tattooed on their thick jackets, intruders wielding silver daggers, silver bullets - designed to kill. 

They took her right in front of Jeonghan’s eyes, plucking her screaming, struggling form from the bed the two of them had begun sharing quite regularly - and he had been utterly defenseless. He tried, he tried his best to save her, to attack, to _bite_ \- but he was outnumbered and outweaponed, was shoved onto the floor like discarded detritus. They didn’t even _care_ enough about him to kill him, were far too focused on slaughtering Sojung instead.

He heard their thick-set human voices spit curses and warnings at her, sneering about how _this is what happens when you filthy supernaturals get too big for your boots,_ that _human supremacy will continue to reign forever, no matter what you pesky little group of bandits try to do._ Her screams had echoed across the room, had resonated so deeply all across Jeonghan’s being that they had become tangled with his own screams, with his own cries of desperation.

“I’ll save you,” Jeonghan had tried to reassure her, had tried to scramble at the feet of the murderous humans and take them out, but the silver lodged in his skin had blurred every bit of his vampire strength, had turned him, once again, into an useless lurker-in-the-dark, doomed to an existence where he can barely be worth anything.

In the end, the last silver bullet had hit Sojung straight in the jugular, bringing her desperate screaming to a cruel, abrupt end.

They left her like that, body and soul damaged beyond repair, every part of her long gone, long dead. And Jeonghan, lying in a miserable bundle on the floor, his tears pooling along with the blood steadily gathering around Sojung’s listless form. 

In one fell swoop, everything was over: 

Sojung, the purpose she gave to Jeonghan’s life, Jeonghan’s loyalty to a cause that will only ever result in collateral damage, nothing else. That will always fall prey to human persecution.

\---

“Oh _Hannie.”_

Joshua’s fingers are gently soothing out the knots in Jeonghan’s uncombed hair, his honeywarm voice Jeonghan’s only source of respite amidst every turbulent thought that’s plaguing him right now. Jeonghan dissolves further against his husband’s chest, folding himself into the tiniest, most impermeable little ball he possibly can as their joined bodies shift against the fabric of their fading living room couch. 

A lone tear rolls down the length of Jeonghan’s nose, deposits itself in the furrow of Joshua’s defined collarbone. But right now, Jeonghan can’t even pretend it’s not what that is, can’t even _attempt_ to mask his vulnerability, can’t wade out from the endless, tumultuous ocean he’s drowning in.

The only thing keeping him from breaking entirely is the heady, half-herbaceous, half-cinnamonlike scent of Joshua Hong - saturating his hypersensitive senses, dousing him with dizziness and clarity in equal measure. 

So all he does is press his nose against Joshua’s, breathing him in, letting more and more tears fall, letting them all collect in the ridges of Joshua’s pristine features, letting Joshua stroke his hair, read his mind, _see_ every disgustingly revealing detail of what had transpired back in Seungcheol’s apartment. Juxtaposed against every disgustingly revealing circumstance of Jeonghan’s dreary past.

“Hannie, you-”

 _“I know,_ okay?” Jeonghan grouses against the length of Joshua’s adam’s apple, “I know I shouldn’t have left like that, I should’ve explained, I should’ve-”

“Hey,” The cadence of Joshua’s voice is heartbreakingly fragile, as if at the slightest push and shove, this delicate symmetry between their bodies - between _them_ \- will shatter in an instant. And maybe it’s true, maybe they are both a little precarious right now, both teetering on the precipice of something that will hurl them into an impossible abyss. “It’s not your fault. You were just caught off guard.”

“But I messed things up,” Regret sits thick in his stomach, and for once, his nonexistent heart _refuses_ to want to beat. It only whimpers like a pathetic, wounded animal in the depths of his hollowed-out chest. “I messed things up for you too. I’m so sorry, Shua.”

What if Seungcheol now hates Joshua too, simply by association? What if Jeonghan’s undue outburst finally was that very nail in the coffin Jeonghan has been afraid of all along - that pivotal moment in which Seungcheol realises these silly old husbands who can’t seem to stop orbiting him like desperate satellites were never _enough_ in the first place.

Jeonghan had made peace with the possibility of it happening from the very first time Seungcheol had flashed his gummy smile at them, but how can he expect Joshua to bear its brunt along with him? How can he watch Joshua undergo the same suffering Jeonghan has brought upon himself? Joshua, gentle, perfect Joshua, who _likes_ Seungcheol an unnerving amount, who laughs delightedly at every silly anecdote Seungcheol has to offer, whose magic bubbles over with joy at the slightest hint of Seungcheol’s touch?

It’s like it was with Sojung all over again - Jeonghan, tortured and deplorable, failing to protect the one person who means everything to him.

“Don’t you _dare,_ Yoon Jeonghan,” Joshua chides, his honey-voice suddenly taking on a far more resolute edge, its mellowness receding by an inch, “Don’t you _dare_ apologise. Don’t you _dare_ blame yourself or jump to drastic conclusions, you hear me? You haven’t messed up _anything_ for me.”

“But, Seungcheol-” Jeonghan sputters, feeling another surge of tears shiver down his cheek, “You and him, you both have… _something._ You wanted to _confess_ to him, for heaven’s sake. And I’ve ruined it all now. I’ve ruined any chance you two could have.”

“No you _didn’t.”_ Joshua punctuates the sentence with a desperate kiss, tasting the salt of Jeonghan’s tears on his tongue, breathing heavily into Jeonghan’s cold, wretched skin. “I don’t want anything with Seungcheol unless you’re a part of it too, Hannie. You _know_ that, you’ve always known that-”

“But-”

“ _No._ No buts, Hannie. I’m not losing you. I’m not losing either of you.”

Tears are welling up in Joshua’s eyes too, slipping past his stunningly long lashes into the slope of his nose, his sniffle escaping into Jeonghan’s wet cheekbone. The last time Jeonghan felt so helpless, so utterly drawn and quartered, was when he was lying on the floor of Sojung’s bedroom shrieking out for help, railing and scrambling against the The Watch as they murdered her right before his eyes. 

Now, too, he wants to scream. He wants to say, _I’m not worth it, Jisoo. I don’t know what you see in me - I don’t know what you saw in me the day we first met - but I wasn’t worth it back then and I’m not worth it now. This is an anomaly, you and me, a blip in time, the rarest of luxuries. It's a miracle we survived so long. It's a miracle that Cheol-_

A knock on their door crudely interrupts his thoughts, the sound once again echoing across their entire apartment, crackling like thunder.

Though this time, it comes unaccompanied by _actual_ thunder and lightning.

"I'll get it," Joshua murmurs, wiping his steadily percolating tears with the back of his shirtsleeve, sighing in defeat. "You stay put, okay? We're not done having this conversation."

Jeonghan can barely nod as Joshua carefully plucks him from his lap and deposits him back on the couch. Joshua gets up then, visibly steeling his shoulders into a gait Jeonghan has seen far too many times before - that particular posture he assumes when he’s deep in the throes of Assessing and Executing, is the gauger-of-things, the solver-of-problems.

Jeonghan was a fool to think he could ever mimic Joshua’s composure back at Seungcheol's apartment. How could he, a meagre creature of the dark, replicate that unmatched combination of focus and willpower that is summoned up so easily during every crisis situation? 

It's evident now too, Joshua slipping into functionality like he wasn't just crying on the couch with Jeonghan two minutes ago, disappearing into the hallway with soft but uncompromising footsteps. There is a telltale click, their front door creaking on its hinges, and then-

“Is he here?” a voice that Jeonghan can recognise even in his sleep, though right now, it is utterly devoid of the mirth it usually holds.

“Cheolie," Joshua breathes out, and it is once again a testament to Jeonghan's supernatural hearing that he can detect that signature _Hong Jisoo Composure_ floundering, on the verge of the collapse. Just this once, perhaps that composure is as brittle as Jeonghan is. "Please don't be mad at him. _Please."_

"I'm not," Seungcheol's words sound tinny as they rebound across the hallway, uttered with such decisiveness that Jeonghan couldn't have missed the sincerity in them even if he tried. "I just want to talk to him."

And suddenly, Jeonghan knows that at last, the unavoidable has arrived. The culmination of all his self-inflicted suffering. 

"He's in a _state,_ Cheolie. Maybe we should give him a little more time to-"

"It's okay, Jisoo." Jeonghan has somehow managed to drag himself off the couch and into the hallway, finally face-to-face with a Seungcheol who looks far more haggard and puffy-eyed that Jeonghan ever wants to see him. A Joshua who is now nervously looking between the both of them like the referee of a tennis match, his abundant magic spilling out unwittingly once again, making the chandelier above them rattle.

"He's here to talk," Even if it’s technically addressed to Joshua, Jeonghan stares straight into Seungcheol's (still irresistibly tender) eyes as he says it. "So let's talk."

\----

They're back on the couch again, Joshua pouring warm ginseng tea (which Jeonghan is sure he’s spiked with some kind of calming potion) into three identical china cups and arranging them carefully on a tray.

However, Seungcheol has chosen to forgo the couch in favour of sitting across from them, on the sole wooden chair in their living room, a relic Jeonghan had collected from another century. It’s somewhat of a favourite with Seungcheol, his preferred spot to perch on every time he’s over to their apartment - Jeonghan has never quite understood this particular preference, but he suspects it has something to do with the chair’s cosy old-timber-smell.

The silence stretches between them, Seungcheol refusing to take his eyes off Jeonghan, refusing to utter a single syllable before Jeonghan says something (he's so annoyingly _stubborn,_ it's making Jeonghan want to tear his hair out). Joshua tries to mediate some more, making small talk about the tea and about how he helped avert a terrible accident among his apprentices earlier that day - something involving smashed cauldrons and mispronounced spells - but it hardly does the trick. It hardly cuts through the tension in the room.

"Did you learn anything new on your Bukhan trip today, Cheolie?" Joshua is asking, another miserable attempt at getting them to say something, _anything,_ but the very mention of Bukhan sends Jeonghan’s mind careening into the events of earlier that morning, of that revelation that had sent him down a hopeless spiral, raging against a nightmarish storm of forgotten memories. 

Jeonghan immediately stiffens beside Joshua, his shoulders squared so tight he can physically feel the strain on his backbone. His breathing gets a little uneven, but he tries to school it into a semblance of calm, hoping that he hasn't given himself away already. He _can't_ afford to have Seungcheol witness him crumble into pieces like he had done in Joshua's arms mere moments ago. God, what would Seungcheol think? 

How much more can Jeonghan debase himself in Seungcheol's eyes?

Except, Seungcheol _does_ notice, because of course he does. Of course he knows where to look, of course he knows how to read Jeonghan like an open book, how to puncture his way through every last palisade and wall Jeonghan has carefully erected around himself. 

"You're so infuriating sometimes, you know that Jeonghannie?" Despite his earlier stubbornness, Seungcheol _is_ the one who ultimately breaks their uncomfortable impasse, an edge of impatience to his tone, "One moment you are so sweet, so caring, so _open,_ and in the next, you totally withdraw into your shell, you _totally_ shut me out. Am I not worth it, Jeonghannie? Do you really not think I deserve to know what's going on in your head? Is it only Shua who gets to have that privilege?"

"Seungcheol!" Joshua exclaims hysterically, his eyes round as saucers, his gasp of horror brutally loud, "It's not like that at all! Hannie's just-"

"It's okay, _jagiya,"_ Jeonghan interjects, reaching for Joshua's hand to placate him, kissing it for good measure, because he knows Joshua needs the added reassurance. 

It warms his (nonexistent) heart that Joshua would spring to Jeonghan's defense so easily, would so steadfastly insist that it's not _Jeonghan_ who is at fault. It’s even a little poetic how the tipping point - the final shattering of Hong Jisoo’s infamous composure, that is unmoved in situations far, far graver than this -is with _Jeonghan_ being put in the line of fire, being pinned at the stake.

But this is an explanation that Jeonghan and only Jeonghan owes Seungcheol. The time for denial and silence is long past. 

After all, he can't always let Joshua fight his battles for him.

"Truth is, Seungcheol-ah," Jeonghan replies after a beat, clearing his throat to stall a little, to blink away a fresh outpouring of tears, to formulate the right words, "I'm worried about you. I don't know how deep into the insurgency you are yet, I don't know how much of its history you know - but everyone who has ever gotten involved with it, no matter how insignificant their contribution, has always faced mortal danger."

He pauses again, desperately struggling to keep his voice from shaking and splintering, to keep the suffocating flood of memories from rushing back in. _I_ _can't fall apart in front of Seungcheol,_ he repeats to himself, but with every passing second, with every apprehensive glance Joshua is throwing at him, with every thump of blood circulating in Seungcheol’s veins that’s far too magnified in the blistering quiet of their apartment (his cursed supernatural senses always picking up on it, always _fixating_ on it) - Jeonghan's resolve is wearing thin. 

It seems, today all his palisades and walls were fated to collapse anyway, doomed to fall apart under the combined impact of Seungcheol’s dark, tender, beseeching eyes and Joshua’s frantic, forlorn, barely-composed-despite-in-a-crisis touch.

Jeonghan never stood a chance.

"The movement always gets brutally crushed," Jeonghan finds it in himself to continue anyway, though he doesn't know _how._ The tremor he was desperately trying to avoid _does_ slip into his voice now, is unmistakable now - he's sure Seungcheol has caught on to it too, he can't not have.

But even as Joshua leans in closer, wraps an arm around Jeonghan to siphon into him all his emotional strength, therapeutic magic, or a mixture of both, Seungcheol just sits there on his favourite wooden chair, watching both Jeonghan and Joshua with an inscrutable look on his face

“There's never any chance of victory, Seungcheol, there's never any chance of survival once you're embroiled in this." Jeonghan sounds piteous, an open wound bleeding out with no recompense, begging for mercy. "Either The Watch gets you, or the human law enforcement does. It always happens. Always."

Joshua’s hand is clasped tight in Jeonghan's, coated in sweat and desperation, his magic surging out of him in anxious bursts, cascading into the junctions of where their fingers meet - the sparks invisible this time, but no less potent. And _yet,_ for once, Joshua's magic fails to heal Jeonghan like it unfailingly does.

Jeonghan continues to be utterly desolate, immune to any sensation that might bring him any form of peace, that might soothe the torments of his mind, of his very soul.

For a seemingly endless duration of time, Seungcheol doesn’t say anything. He simply stares with a maddening intensity at the spot on Jeonghan's lap where his and Joshua's entwined hands are suspended, where Joshua’s invisible magic engulfs Jeonghan but fails to have any real effect. Seungcheol’s face is still inscrutable, giving away nothing, but his lips are parted in the slightest of ways, like his own spiraling breaths need an outlet just like Jeonghan's do.

And then, without warning or preamble, Choi Seungcheol’s entire demeanour shifts. 

He gets up from his favourite antique wooden chair, walks over to Jeonghan and Joshua with measured, trembling steps, his hands flexing and unflexing beside him. He kneels before their feet, breathtakingly tender eyes looking up at them, finally, _finally_ betraying the blatantly sincere devotion that Jeonghan has become so used to seeing over the course of the past few months. 

And then, without even less of a warning, he places his hand over theirs, the touch feather-light and electric.

Three pieces of a long-lost puzzle, slotting into place. 

Their shared telepathic synchrony coming full circle, finding a home.

"But _you_ survived, didn't you, Jeonghannie?" Seungcheol's voice is velveteen-soft, almost a little fragile. His eyes pierce into Jeonghan's, his breath crackles in the air between their skin.

"How did you know that Hannie was part of-" Joshua is the one who exclaims again, stunned at the revelation. Jeonghan can barely speak, can barely _budge_ in the wake of Seungcheol's unyielding gaze.

"Just because I'm new to the supernatural world, it doesn't mean I don't know what I'm doing," Seungcheol murmurs in reply, the words vulnerable in a way that Jeonghan has absolutely no idea what to do with it, "I know who started the insurgent movement, and I know who helped take it forward."

"I-" is all Jeonghan can gasp out, utterly spellbound. Utterly unable to form coherent sentences anymore. 

"People still remember you, Jeonghannie, you know that?" There's the twinge of a bittersweet smile at the corner of Seungcheol's lips, almost like a subtle sign of surrender, of giving in, "They still talk about Kim Sojung's right hand man, the first person who ever believed in her vision of a better world."

"Wh-who…" Jeonghan manages to blurt out while Joshua's mouth falls open, his grip on Jeonghan's hand tightening even further (if that was even possible), "Who have you been talking to?"

"Does that matter, Jeonghannie?" Seungcheol leans down to kiss the top of their joined hands, the exact bridge between Joshua and his palms, brimming with Joshua's latent magic, with Jeonghan's utter despondency.

Despite it all, despite the tension within this fateful moment, despite the gravity of what they’re discussing, the kiss makes Joshua blush a bright, iridiscent pink. It makes Jeonghan’s nonexistent heart want to _race,_ want to skip a beat, want to flounce around in his chest.

"I know," Seungcheol murmurs into their skin, his nose wedged against the curve of their three joined palms that have fused them into a tentative unit, into a balance that could be disrupted any minute, "I know the risks involved, I know what happens to insurgents and I know what happened to Sojung. But here's something else to consider-"

He looks up again, levels another sweltering look first at Joshua, then at Jeonghan. "Sojung's ideas have lived on even after a century. No matter how many times insurgent movements across the country have been crushed, the seeds she once planted have continued to grow. People continue to come together to speak truth to power."

"But-"

"And do you know what else has made this possible?" Seungcheol seems to be on a rampage, refusing to brook any argument, refusing to listen to Jeonghan’s rebuttals until he has explained himself completely. " _The bar._ It’s you both who created a safe space where all species of supernaturals could gather, have a drink together, talk to each other. And guess what happened once they started realising they could actually get _along?"_

"They started organising again." Joshua fills in the blanks, gaping in awe at the terrifying possibility (or rather, reality) of it all. 

"Exactly." Seungcheol's bittersweet smile widens by an inch, "They started thinking about how to carry Sojung’s work forward, how to build a better resistance."

_Sojung’s work._

Back when Jeonghan had first met her, Sojung didn’t think even her ideas would survive her next public speech, much less an entire century - much less _now,_ in another wave of revolution against a corrupt authority attempting to stifle their rights, in another outburst that might get violently suppressed any minute. _Had her death been worth it?_ Jeonghan had asked himself again and again, ever since that fateful night The Watch barged into her bedroom. _Had it been too much of a cost to bear to change the world? Should she not have done what she had done? Should she not have ruffled any feathers, not have raised her voice?_

It was partly the reason why Jeonghan had severed all ties with the insurgency completely, had sworn off all allegiances with it. If this was the aftermath of revolution, he did not want it. If a life as bright, as magnificent as Sojung’s could be extinguished in a moment’s notice, just like _that,_ he did not want it. What was the point, corralling all your blood, sweat and tears into a resistance that brought nothing but impending disaster? What was the point, submitting yourself to a cause that only tears people apart, only collects more and more casualties?

But maybe he was wrong.

Here, right in this moment, is living, breathing proof that perhaps, it _hasn’t_ all been futile. Here is concrete, corporeal evidence that Sojung’s legacy _hadn’t_ possibly been in vain. That, right under his nose, the movement has been blossoming, at his own _bar_ of all places, among his own people - the irony isn’t lost on him, he’s sure Sojung is somewhere up there (in whatever iteration of heaven supernaturals are allotted), chuckling to herself. 

Jeonghan, albeit unwittingly, has done his part to preserve Sojung’s legacy too.

The knowledge chafes at him, overwhelms him with a renewed flood of incomprehensible, impossible emotions he doesn’t know how to come to terms with. After all, how could he? How could he wrap his head around it all after everything he’s endured? All the self-loathing, all the decades’ worth of agony and self-loathing and-

Seungcheol is still smiling at him, his eyes perpetually tender, his hair scruffy and soft in that exact way Jeonghan cannot resist. The pink in Joshua’s cheeks has still not entirely faded, Seungcheol’s touch on their interminably joined hands still, completely and utterly, exhilarating. 

And Jeonghan is nothing but putty in their arms, mere clay for them to mould and maneuver as they please.

All his illusions of self-control are, bit-by-bit, evaporating into thin air.

"But you don't know what it's like, Cheolie." Jeonghan attempts again, but this time his protest sounds weak, even to his own ears. "All this is idealism. Once you're out there, it’s different….you don't even have a pack that will protect you, if something happens and…"

"Hey look at me," Seungcheol interrupts, pulling himself up on his knees so he's directly poised right above Jeonghan's face, their noses lining up with each other's, breaths mingling. 

He cups Jeonghan's cheek, his hands titillatingly warm against Jeonghan's pale, ever-frigid skin, "Nothing will happen. I know how to take care of myself, yeah?” He pauses then, his breath hovering over the corner of Jeonghan’s mouth, “And besides, who says I don't have a pack? I have the two of you, don't I? "

Seungcheol says it so nonchalantly, like it's a fact as fundamental and customary as _the sky is blue, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Jeonghan and Joshua, Seungcheol's pack._

The ramifications of that one single sentence, one single label. The deep-rooted existential bond it implies, the loyalty, the soul-connection that a _pack_ symbolises-

It’s not something that happens lightly, even among werewolves that flit between packs every few decades. There’s _weight_ to that, a significance transcending the combined imaginations of everyone in this room.

How could Seungcheol say something like that, how could he not realise the depth of-

"Cheolie," Joshua whispers, honey-warm but in the most devastating of ways. There’s tears in his eyes again, drifting down his nose no matter how much he tries to blink them away, the invisible magic swirling between their connected hands reaching a boiling point. "I'm, we're…." For a brief second, he stares at Jeonghan, broken, like never before - _pleading,_ like never before. 

Then he stares back at Seungcheol, something infinitely delicate clouding his doe-eyes. 

With his unclasped hand - shaking a little under the force of...everything that has lead up to this moment - he reaches out to caress Seungcheol's face, lingering on a spot right above his lips. 

"You mean it, Cheolie?" Joshua whispers again, but this time there's the beginnings of blue-green light _actually_ spilling out of his fingers, his magic visible and tangible once again, taking a life of its own, reflecting the tentative hope that Jeonghan can _sense_ is sprouting within his _Hong Jisoo._

"I really do," Seungcheol leans into Joshua's touch, despite his (tender) eyes still being determinedly fixed on Jeonghan, his callused hands still unwaveringly holding on to Jeonghan's face. "You are everything to me, both of you. You have to know that. I thought you already must have guessed-"

And that's it, the final and ultimate revelation of this afternoon - the one to end all things. The climax that snaps every string holding him together in half, that-

Finally makes him stop resenting the thunderings of his nonexistent heart.

 _You are everything to me, both of you._ A simple sentence, clear in syntax and meaning, said, once more with the nonchalance of someone commenting on the weather, asking you what time of the day it is.

And Jeonghan has _had it,_ he has had it with _himself,_ with every single stupid circumstance that has made him what he is - a monster forever lurking in the dark, incapable of hope, incapable of sympathy. He has had it with the naked longing in Joshua’s eyes everytime Seungcheol is in the vicinity, with _his own_ longing mirrored in the way he can barely _breathe_ without being affected by every aspect of Seungcheol’s being.

And so, Jeonghan surges forward with a force he didn't know he contained, a _courage_ he didn't know he contained, and commits his final act of treason:

He captures Seungcheol's mouth in an unrelenting kiss, pouring every inch of his cursed, monstrous soul into it, every single repressed emotion, every nonexistent beating of his nonexistent heart. 

It’s rough and unrehearsed, more a collision of lips and teeth than something savoured and subtle, Jeonghan’s fangs involuntarily slipping out in this utter relinquishing of control, nudging at Seungcheol’s bottom lip. Seungcheol moans, an untethered, unhinged sound, his hands travelling from Jeonghan’s cheeks to his uncombed hair, grabbing on to it for dear life, his loudly skittering pulse unlocking something ancient and unexplored inside Jeonghan, an emotion he only experienced the day Joshua had first professed his love to him.

 _So this is what it feels like,_ Jeonghan thinks to himself, _This is what it feels like to indulge in hope, to pursue a fantasy._

He thought it would be the highest form of transgression, that it would shroud him in everlasting disgrace and wretchedness, but instead it’s-

It’s.

_Perfect._

As natural and inevitable as the turning of the seasons, as the waning of the moon.

 _"Oh,"_ Seungcheol seems to be in a daze when they pull apart, his tender eyes all glossed over, his breathing coming in fits and starts.

 _"Oh,"_ Joshua says, and it sings of his trademark honey-warmth, but also laced with something more - a hunger that has finally reached its crescendo, a quest that is finally complete.

Three pieces of a long-lost puzzle, slotting into place, _at last._

When Joshua surges forward to kiss Seungcheol, it is slower, more restrained, mapping out every inch of Seungcheol’s mouth like a seasoned cartographer, like he never wants to stop discovering the bounteous treasures that lie within. Their bodies melt against each other’s, Joshua reaching out to wrap an arm around Seungcheol’s waist, to pull him closer and closer until Jeonghan can’t tell where Joshua’s gasps of pleasure end and where Seungcheol’s begin, and-

"We can be a pack for real, you know," Joshua murmurs against the kiss, then separates from Seungcheol’s lips with the briefest hint of shyness, that same iridescent pink blush coating his cheeks again. 

He stares at Jeonghan then, squeezes at their _still_ joined hands - hands neither of them are willing to extricate themselves from just yet. "I…know how to do a bonding spell, blood magic that will connect us forever." There's a hesitation in his voice, but still an unmistakable ring of hope. "It’s not the same thing as an actual pack-bonding ritual but….it’s basically the same principle."

Joshua bites his lip bashfully, blinking at Jeonghan from between those impossibly long pretty eyelashes that have always been Jeonghan’s ultimate weakness, his ultimate kryptonite.

“I know that it won’t be a...guarantee that always keeps Cheol safe, but…” Joshua continues, as a bright red set of sparks already halo his fingers, already beginning to curl around them in the shape of a magical dome. “But it can be a _commitment._ A commitment to be there for each other, to take care of each other.”

Jeonghan has never been part of a coven, a pack, whatever you choose to label it - it’s all a matter of semantics, really - a part of something infinitely bigger than himself, a _unit,_ a family. After Sojung’s death, he had imposed a painful exile upon himself, an isolation from all things that would lead to any further attachment, further form of loss. _He was okay on his own,_ he would tell himself. He didn’t need anyone, didn’t need any other potential casualty.

But he met Joshua Hong - of the pretty eyes and radiant smile, possessor of unimaginable power but unimaginable kindness, his saviour, his purest, sincerest love. _His husband._

Joshua became the only exception, made him want to love again, made him want to open up to getting _attached_ without fearing impending downfall. But Joshua was always going to be the only one, the only one Jeonghan would allow his nonexistent heart to be sheltered by, the only one who would ever bear the brunt of witnessing the monster within him and continuing to _stay,_ until-

In walked Choi Seungcheol with his scruffy hair and _infuriating_ knack for seeing right through Jeonghan’s carefully-constructed barriers. Choi Seungcheol, with his endless resilience and endless generosity, with his tender eyes, his lingering touches.

And here they are all, on the brink of _commitment._ On the brink of legitimacy, of creating something that will be immortalised in time, that will bond them irreparably. 

There’s no going back from this - no indecision, no last-minute cold feet.

Jeonghan has never seen Joshua look so full of purpose, so hell-bent on executing a spell that it has already begun manifesting itself before he can ever utter an incantation. But at the same time, there is their shared telepathic synchrony, imploring Jeonghan for what seems like the millionth time, _I like this boy_ ** _so_** **_much,_** _Hannie, please say yes._

And Jeonghan is powerless to ever deny him, is powerless to deny _Seungcheol,_ whose tender eyes are shining with an eagerness that threatens to drown Jeonghan completely.

And for just this once, Jeonghan is also powerless to deny his own nonexistent heart,the root of all his dilemmas, but perhaps, also his greatest asset.

"I would like that." Seungcheol says, and a gummy smile is taking over his face, is illuminating him from head to toe.

 _Me too,_ Jeonghan thinks. _I would like that too._

\---

This is how it goes:

Seungcheol is splayed out on their bed - shirt discarded long ago - the planes of his chiseled, exquisite chest in full tantalising display, the fly of his jeans half-undone. Joshua’s mouth is all over him, on the upward arch of his bottom lip, on the boulder of his adam’s apple, on the dark, alluring bud of his left nipple. Jeonghan is right next to them, an arm securely wrapped around both their waists, eyes devouring every inch of the havoc Joshua is wreaking on Seungcheol’s skin, nose routinely dipping into the chaos of Seungcheol’s ever-lustrous, ever-soft, ever-disheveled hair. 

“Jeonghannie,” Seungcheol moans, shuddering all over as Joshua’s onslaught slips lower, his tongue settling on Seungcheol’s belly button, on the cords of muscle that encase Seungcheol’s stomach, “I want you _too,_ please, p-please-”

He lets out another wrecked moan, a byproduct of another flick of Joshua’s tongue, this time hovering dangerously close to Seungcheol’s happy trail, “Please kiss me, _Hannie_ -”

Jeonghan sucks in a rugged breath.

There’s a common misconception among human scholars of vampire anatomy. 

The journals, the academic lectures, the various illustrious theorists will tell you: vampires don’t have hearts, they can’t pump blood to the rest of their body. Will tell you: the blood stays coiled up in their egregious little veins, stagnant residue of their once-human life, a reminder of the monster they have now become, a reminder of the _aliveness_ that they have forsaken once and for all.

But the truth is: vampires _do_ circulate blood. 

Just as every other creature that walks this earth, they too learned to adapt, learned to survive the harshest odds of existence. Vampire blood learned to pump itself on its own, learned to maneuver itself through said egregious little veins without the assistance of a constantly beating heart, without any other form of sustenance.

And right now, that blood is swirling within Jeonghan in every direction, is rushing straight downwards, is hardening his erection into something utterly unavoidable, unavoidably _alive_ and poignant. 

Seungcheol’s eyelashes flutter like butterfly’s wings, his appeal dying halfway in his mouth before he can properly articulate it. But it’s still _distinct,_ suspended in the sweat-thick air between them, loud and impossibly clear.

_Please kiss me, Hannie._

Even Joshua pauses, briefly abandoning his exploration of Seungcheol’s skin to stare up at the spot where Jeonghan’s hands are stroking Seungcheol’s neck, at how Seungcheol’s eyes are currently looking more manic than tender, a searing heat climaxing within them.

It’s the first time Seungcheol has called him _Hannie._

So far, the diminutive has been reserved only for Joshua, has only ever been wielded with such a staggering degree of intimacy by that _one_ person. It’s a rare gift Jeonghan gets to have, the single rare luxury he has allowed himself to indulge in without endless self-loathing, the only _weakness_ that he doesn’t feel utterly repulsed by.

And Seungcheol saying it, phrasing it _like that,_ at the very peak of his unravelling, _like that,_ appended to _that_ appeal, that delirious surrender-

It hits him like a tidal wave. Jeonghan is _defeated,_ thoroughly and conclusively, is uprooted, upbraided-

But by this point, Jeonghan reckons he should stop letting this sort of thing surprise him. 

Seungcheol has already become a part of their imperfect, tenuous universe in every way imaginable, has forged a _literal_ bond of commitment with them that is meant to be unimpeachable, that is meant to last forever. 

And when you’re supernatural, a forever is a _long,_ tedious, relentless affair. A forever is more than an average commitment, more than an average future, more substantial than any physical truth of existence.

All werewolf packs and vampire covens brand matching marks onto their skin once a bonding ritual is complete. It’s done through fire-on-iron, the old-fashioned way, despite the various modern human innovations that have evolved into tattoo guns, needles, and heaven-knows-what. 

_Theirs_ , though, is one carved out of Joshua’s magic - a simple pattern of three crisscrossed cartoon hearts. 

An indelible, insoluble _mark,_ tying their fates together for an infinite forever.

(Once their pack-bond had been sealed - the spell concluding with a panting Joshua and a Seungcheol and Jeonghan drenched in buzzing heat from head to toe - it had appeared, right above the concave dip of each of their sternums, identical in shape and form. 

Jeonghan had commented on the irony of its design, but Seungcheol had simply gummy-smiled at him and said, “I think it’s apt”).

And it is _here_ that Jeonghan chooses to launch his own personal expedition into Seungcheol’s glorious exposed skin, exactly as breathtaking as the night they first met him. It is _here_ that Jeonghan complies with Seungcheol’s frenzied, primal, hopelessly desperate request. 

It is here that finally Jeonghan leans down to _kiss,_ his breath tickling the smattering of freckles that populate Seungcheol’s chest, his lips tracing every contour of the dark blue, magically-inked, conjoined cartoon hearts. Their _mark,_ carved of magic and eternity.

 _Ne plus ultra._ The final shattering of boundaries, the final conquest of frontiers. Jeonghan's egregious little blood vessels igniting, spilling over with every form of _aliveness_ there possibly can exist, every form of aliveness that human scholars will never have the capacity to comprehend.

"Cheolie," Jeonghan murmurs into the twisted ellipse where the cartoon hearts converge, tasting the goosebumps that erupt on Seungcheol's skin in response. "As long as you'll have me, I'll kiss you. I'll kiss you anywhere you want."

Seungcheol throws his head back in unbridled pleasure, his hair a stunning festoon against the pillow, his gasps so full of reckless abandon Jeonghan feels like crying all over again, but this time because he’s utterly amazed at the effect he has on Seungcheol, at the impact of just a single kiss, just a singular moment of devotion.

A guttural, absolutely incoherent sound escapes Seungcheol as he looks down again at where Jeonghan’s lips are still hovering over the bond-mark. Though Jeonghan can’t entirely make out what that sound is trying to convey, his vampire hearing does latch on to one tiny, firm utterance:

A whispered, _“Hannie-”_

Joshua smiles then, a full-bodied Joshua Hong smile, complete with crinkles around his eyes and radiant cheeks and the gentle, all-encompassing magic that makes up his very _soul,_ not just his vocation.

“Idiots, the both of you,” He murmurs, more to himself than to Seungcheol and Jeonghan, but the both of them hear it anyway. 

Both of them smile back - Seungcheol’s smile wide and gummy as always (albeit a little winded, a little too lust-ridden) and Jeonghan’s tentative, yet no less ecstatic, no less unquestionably fond.

Joshua leans back down to resume his onslaught, to plunder the length of Seungcheol’s stomach with his mouth, to carefully maneuver and dispense with whatever remains of Seungcheol’s jeans until the only barrier between them and Seungcheol is the tightness of Seungcheol’s bright red boxers, is the unmistakable outline of Seungcheol’s hardness straining against its fabric.

And.

Jeonghan shuts his eyes, dizzy with blasphemous longing. 

Except, the longing doesn’t feel blasphemous anymore, doesn’t feel forbidden anymore. The longing is here, between them, swaddling them into this breathless moment, keeping them momentarily safe from the perils of the outside world.

And for the first time, Jeonghan _can_ want. For the first time, Jeonghan can _have_ what he wants.

\----

Later, after Joshua has made Seungcheol fall apart in more ways than one, with more than just his mouth. With deft hands, with quiet thrusts, with bodies slotting together - moving in unison, slipping and sliding and buckling under the weight of each other’s machinations-

Later, after Jeonghan has been an equally eager participant in the deflowering of one Choi Seungcheol, has been just as liberal with his roving touches, with his unwavering kisses, with his own set of thrusts against the hypnotic curve of Seungcheol’s hole. After Jeonghan has kept letting his sharp vampire canines graze at Seungcheol's neck (only gingerly though, not enough to draw blood), has revelled in the way Seungcheol screamed Jeonghan’s name in response, uttering a growl so visceral and _ravaged_ that Jeonghan made a mental note to explore this particular... _inclination_ of Seungcheol’s at a later time, with greater attention-

“What now?” Seungcheol whispers into Jeonghan's shoulder, as Joshua strokes Seungcheol's hair in that particularly calming way of his.

They are lying in bed all tangled together - Seungcheol wedged snugly between Jeonghan and Joshua, very much like the night of the thunderstorm - spent from their numerous orgasms, a little clingy and disbalanced from the sheer rollercoaster of conflict and resolution they have all been through in the span of the past few hours, all leading up to this final moment of release and closure.

Jeonghan stomach roils momentarily, stricken and terrified all over again at the latent weight in Seungcheol’s question - even if asked with a fond exhaustion, at best. _What now,_ indeed _?_

What if Seungcheol is regretting and reconsidering everything? What if, after all that’s been said and done, Seungcheol _did_ finally come to the conclusion that Jeonghan and Joshua _weren’t_ enough, that they weren’t what he was looking for, what he had built up in his head-

“What now is that you’re staying over tonight,” Joshua replies before Jeonghan’s mind can regurgitate any more catastrophic worst-case-scenarios and lead him down a desolate abyss all over again. 

(Joshua, as always, gauging exactly the sort of assurance and centering Jeonghan needs to get his overactive brain to shut up. Joshua, as always, effortlessly _providing_ the assurance and centering Jeongan needs, without him having to say a single word.)

“What now is that I’m gonna make you dinner, while Jeonghan drinks one of his blood cocktails,” Joshua pulls himself closer to kiss Seungcheol’s forehead, his fingers curling around a particularly scruffy strand of Seungcheol's hair, “And then we’ll have a nice little first date here in our apartment itself, and then...”

Joshua punctuates the words with a delicate brush of his lips against Seungcheol’s, a touch so brief yet so scintillating _,_ it makes Seungcheol shudder all over, “We’ll kiss some more.”

Seungcheol smiles against Joshua’s mouth, bright and gummy, “You _know_ that’s not what I was asking, but,” he turns to look at Jeonghan then, tender eyes boring into pale alabaster vampire skin, regarding Jeonghan with unrestrained devotion (and Jeonghan can tell it's devotion by now, can let himself admit it and revel in it), “I can live with that.”

He leans down then, capturing Jeonghan’s parted lips into an invigorating kiss, leaving Jeonghan breathless and completely spellbound, all his worst-case-scenarios and clamouring insecurities fading by a margin - by an unexpectedly _large_ margin.

“I would love to go on a date with you, Hong Jisoo and Yoon Jeonghan” Seungcheol breathes into Jeonghan’s bottom lip, Joshua’s hand still steady in his hair, Joshua’s smile utterly _resplendent._ “I would stay for as long as you want.”

\----

The most Joshua can scrounge up at that hour is some greasy cheese kimchi fried-rice, which Seungcheol happily polishes off within seconds, considering he’s hardly gotten anything to eat in the collective rollercoaster of today.

Joshua _dotes_ on him, staring at him with the most indulgent look known to man, shoveling more rice onto Seungcheol’s empty bowl, brushing away a stray remnant of kimchi that got stuck at the corner of his mouth. But honestly, who is Jeonghan to fault Joshua when he himself is no better, when his own indulgence simply refuses to stay at bay, when his own fond smiles keep stumbling out at the mere sight of Seungcheol’s adorable pouting and humming and gummy-smiling?

Perhaps, wearing his (nonexistent) heart on his sleeve isn’t such a terrible predicament after all. Perhaps, Darwinian adaptation is overrated.

Perhaps, Jeonghan should stop being such an idiot.

"I think I loved the both of you from the moment I met you", Seungcheol says in between large mouthfuls, a tad matter-of-fact but still embodying the essence of the carefree banter he had been engaging in mere seconds ago, "I thought I was being selfish, because- how could I pine after two people who were already so deeply in love with each other? How could I fit into a relationship that’s been built and sustained over decades? Or worse, what if I _ruined_ a relationship that’s been built and sustained over decades?"

He pauses then, swallowing the bite he was chewing and reaching over across the table to hold each of their hands, to look both of them directly in the eye and say-

“You saved my life in more ways than one, you know that?” Seungcheol is suddenly a lot more serious, his tender eyes dark with determination, with the very same devotion that Jeonghan has now learned to clearly recognise, “You took me in when I had no one, and you _saw_ me, you saw the real me and not the... _creature_ I’d been forced to become. You took care of me, and you showed me I was worthy of being taken care of.”

"Oh Cheolie," Joshua gasps out, bringing their joined hands to his mouth for a heartstopping butterfly-kiss, “You were always worth being taken care of, we were both-”

"In love with you," Jeonghan interrupts, back suddenly straight, jaw steady with conviction. He’s doing that thing again - letting himself _feel,_ letting himself wear his (nonexistent) heart on his sleeve, chafing against all his centuries-old instincts to stop being an idiot, to start being a little more brave. "We were in love with you too, both of us. From the very beginning."

"R-really?" Seungcheol’s eyes are wide with disbelief, as if this revelation truly is implausible, even after everything they have confessed in the past few hours with words, bodies, kisses, “I didn’t think - I guessed that Joshua might reciprocate, perhaps, but you...I didn’t think you…”

“That’s because I’m colossally stupid, Choi Seungcheol,” Jeonghan sighs, suddenly racked with guilt over never having been emotionally available enough, never having been honest enough, “I’m...bad at expressing myself and processing emotions the normal way, and I really am sorry if I ever hurt you. Maybe once you...once we...start doing _this_ regularly you'll find yourself being very disappointed with my lack of-"

"Oh please, _not again."_ Joshua groans, his eyebrows furrowed. He lets go of Seungcheol’s hand briefly but only to cross his arms and glare at Jeonghan (though it lacks any bite, is born more out of fond exasperation than any actual outrage).

"Cheolie,” Joshua continues with a huff, though his glare is still directed squarely at Jeonghan, “Please tell our silly wonderful Hannie that he's very very loved and that he isn't the monster he thinks he is."

_Our. Our Hannie._

He’s _their_ Hannie. He’s theirs.

The thought lodges itself into his chest both like the most violent bolt of lightning and the mellow, refreshing rain that restores the balance of nature, that makes the soil fertile and the flowers bloom and the cicadas leap with unadulterated joy.

He doesn’t know what to do with the revelation, he doesn’t-

Or perhaps, he _does._ Perhaps, he’s known all along, and-

Perhaps, Jeonghan really should stop being such an idiot.

Seungcheol laughs - a giddy, addictive sound - and abandons his bowl of rice to tiptoe over to Jeonghan, to settle into Jeonghan’s lap, to meld his lips against Jeonghan's, to slip his tongue into Jeonghan's mouth and consume him, with slow, careful caresses.

Jeonghan is reduced to a heaving mess, simpering in the wake of Seungcheol's slow, precious plunder, holding onto the back of Seungcheol's neck for purchase to keep from losing his balance entirely.

"You are very very loved," Seungcheol insists once they seperate, breathing heavy against the patch of skin between Jeonghan’s nose and upper lip, eyes wild yet hopelessly sincere, hopelessly tender. 

From the corner of his own eye, Jeonghan can see Joshua beaming in an unbearably smug sort of way, pleased at how he now finally has someone to gang up on Jeonghan with, someone to ply Jeonghan with affection and words of affirmation with. A partner in crime, but in the best possible way.

Another breathless kiss, but this time far more chaste, pressed against the tip of Jeonghan’s nose. Lest Jeonghan forget whose mercy he is at, lest Jeonghan forget just how intense and all-consuming Seungcheol's effect on him is.

"You are not the monster you think you are, our silly wonderful Hannie." Seungcheol gummy-smiles while saying it, his voice lowering by an octave, getting a lot more serene, a lot more meaningful.

And for the first time in his long, miserable, supernatural _forever,_ Jeonghan feels inclined to believe it.

\---

The room they're in is somewhat...shabby - but that’s putting it mildly.

Rot is seeping into the intersections between the walls and ceiling, the paint chipping off in more than one spot, a damp musty smell coating the air, blanketing it in an odd twinge of suffocation and squalour. But nevertheless, the place is suitably covert, nestled in the basement of an abandoned office building deep in the heart of south-east Seoul, free from human intervention or human surveillance. 

Strangely enough, though, none of the unpleasantness of the surroundings has deterred the pretty sizable turnout that's here today, both old faces and new, from diverse and wide-ranging supernatural species, packs, covens, communities. People Jeonghan never expected to see all in one room, _especially_ not in this dingy little basement-room, at a location so far away from civilisation Jeonghan had doubted its legitimacy from the minute he heard of it.

(“Come on, give it a chance,” Seungcheol had said, another orange pamphlet clutched in the palm of his hands, blinking up at Jeonghan through those absurdly long, absurdly _pretty_ eyelashes of his, “Just one meeting, that’s it. You don’t have to go back again if you don’t like it.”

And Jeonghan, despite all his years of accumulated terror and paranoia, all the palpitations of his nonexistent heart, all the crushing feelings of failure and despair that have ravaged him since Sojung’s death - had been once again powerless to resist, powerless to say no.

Seungcheol’s tender, urgent eyes really were far too effective, far too equipped to melt away every last one of Jeonghan’s carefully-constructed boundaries.

Jeonghan had sighed, and then nodded. 

Joshua had smiled, and leaned forward to pull both him and Seungcheol into a vice-tight embrace.)

Mingyu grins and waves at them from the coffee dispenser at the other end of the room - and it makes sense to see him here, really, _no wonder_ Seungcheol got radicalised so swiftly if Mingyu was involved in all this too. The two of them have become thick as thieves, Mingyu fashioning himself into Seungcheol's bonafide mentor in all things werewolf, and, it seems, in all things supernatural politics. Jeonghan hesitantly waves back, not wanting to appear rude.

While Mingyu radiates nothing but infectious enthusiasm, the other end of this emotional spectrum is occupied by none other that Lee Jihoon - who Jeonghan _will_ admit he's surprised to see here, though at this point Jeonghan should no longer be; considering half his bar's clientele have shown up ( _even_ Joohyun's coven). Jihoon is ever the undecipherable enigma, sulking inconspicuously in a corner, taking sips out of a hipflask of something that unmistakably smells like cheap, magicked beer. 

There's Junhui too, gleefully bounding over to Jihoon as he adjusts the collar of his jacket, clears his throat and prepares to unleash his charm full-throttle. Jihoon definitely stiffens a little when he sees Junhui approach, but miraculously does not protest. For the first time ever (at least in Jeonghan’s recent memory), Jihoon lets Junhui gladly bombard him with his endlessly meandering banter, even cracks a half-smile at one of Junhui's silly jokes. 

But instead of being comforted by the familiar sight of familiar bar patrons, familiar friends and familiar colleagues, all Jeonghan can do is nervously chew at his bottom lip - a habit he didn't even realise he picked up from Joshua - studiously avoiding the curious glances that are _very_ unsubtly being aimed his way.

He recognises some of them from Sojung's time. Old comrades who once fought in the frontlines with them, who stuck with the resistance even when Jeonghan couldn't, even when the resistance itself was on the verge of perpetual collapse. 

_People still remember you, Jeonghannie, you know that?_ Seungcheol had said. _They still talk about Kim Sojung's right hand man, the first person who ever believed in her vision of a better world._

But what do they say about him? 

Yoon Jeonghan, _the coward?_ Yoon Jeonghan, _the deserter?_ Yoon Jeonghan, the only person who was present to witness Sojung’s destruction, who could have rescued her but-

“I can hear your thoughts, Hannie," Joshua immediately intervenes because _god,_ Joshua always, always knows when to, doesn't he? "Don't. Don't go down that road, okay? It'll be fine, no one's here to judge you, sweetheart."

"But-" Jeonghan attempts to refute, but is cut off midway by the steady, soothing weight of Seungcheol's arm, wrapping itself around his waist, pulling him closer until he's flush to Seungcheol's side. 

"It's gonna be okay," Seungcheol reassures, and his voice is like a gentle salve, the remedy to every tiny coil of fear and uncertainty that has begun unfurling in his overactive brain. "You're gonna be okay."

It’s a little overwhelming, having not just Joshua but now also _Seungcheol_ constantly beside him, ready to jump in the minute they suspect Jeonghan is about to once again spiral into an abyss of his own making, is about to once again be a gigantic idiot. It doesn’t always unequivocally work, isn’t a fool-proof solution to the way Jeonghan’s insidious mind loves to sabotage itself, loves to lock itself in an unjust prison, but it does something Jeonghan has never had before.

It gives him perspective.

It gives him pause.

Jeonghan has no illusions about the kind of person he is. He knows he can’t quite...express himself the way Joshua and Seungcheol do, can’t quite _accept_ himself the way Joshua and Seungcheol do, can’t quite shed the self-doubt, even the self-loathing. But slowly, under the unabashed, unchanging thrall of Joshua’s always-faithful love and support, under the searing, extraordinary aftermath of Seungcheol’s boundless trust, reverent touches, reassurances like _this,_ that say: _we’ll be okay as long as we have each other, the world is going to be cruel anyway, but we can’t always torture ourselves about it, can we? -_

Jeonghan is realising that perhaps, there _are_ ways to survive without being consumed with endless remorse and despair. He is more than just a blip in time, more than an anomaly, perhaps, even - more than a monster.

He can be a husband, a boyfriend, an equal, loyal companion to two of the most beautiful men he has ever laid eyes on, two of the most honourable men he has had the privilege of knowing.

He can be protected by them, can be held by them, can be cherished by them. 

He can be _their Hannie._

Hope may still be a luxury built solely for humans, but maybe Jeonghan can partake in it too, just a little.

“Okay,” Jeonghan says, burying his face into the crook of Seungcheol’s neck, “I’ll stop panicking. Just want this meeting to begin already.”

Seungcheol chuckles, and Jeonghan feels it rumble all across his body, feels it carve a permanent niche in the hollow of his chest - where his nonexistent heart lives and threatens to beat every single day, even if it still physically cannot. 

“It’ll begin soon,” Seungcheol kisses the top of Jeonghan’s head, tightens his grip on Jeonghan’s waist, “They’re just waiting for Wonwoo. Oh, I think you’ll like Wonwoo, he’s a total nerd just like you.”

“‘M not a nerd” Jeonghan grumbles against the fabric of Seungcheol’s soft oversized sweater, and Seungcheol chuckles again, warming the very tips of Jeonghan’s toes, slowly and deliberately banishing the dark, desolate cloud of all of Jeonghan’s worries

“Oh you totally are,” Joshua is the one who replies, reaching over to sink his hands into Jeonghan’s hair too, ruffling and playing with it like he loves to do often. “Do you know where Hannie and I first met, Cheolie? _A bookstore.”_

“No way!” Seungcheol exaggerates his awe, but something about his look of fond amusement betrays that he’s not surprised at all. That he saw through Jeonghan’s rough, monstrous exterior from day one, uncovered the very essence of what makes Jeonghan tick from day one.

Seungcheol dug past to reveal that terrible vulnerability Jeonghan _hates_ to expose, _hates_ to admit is the most governing part of him, and he treasured it. He treasured Jeonghan no matter what, no matter what the circumstances, no matter how much Jeonghan unravelled before him.

“I was just a store clerk,” Jeonghan grumbles again in weak defense, “It was the only day job that paid decently at the time!”

“Oh you wouldn’t believe it, Cheolie,” Joshua giggles, eyes twinkling in mischief and glee and the tiniest hint of nostalgia, “I was browsing the _advanced potion-making_ section of the bookstore and he came over to ask me if I was looking for anything in particular. When I said no, he narrated - in great detail, by the way - the contents of every single book on that aisle, hoping something would strike my fancy. He was _so cute_ and nerdy.”

Seungcheol’s laugh is blinding, his hand slowly climbing upwards from Jeonghan’s waist to where their bond-mark is branded on his sternum (currently hidden under Jeonghan’s button-up shirt), massaging soothing circles into it. “As expected of our Hannie,” he murmurs, voice pitched low so only Jeonghan and Joshua can hear, “The cutest and nerdiest in the land.”

Jeonghan groans, but he’s sure his vampire-blush has given him away entirely. He doesn’t know how prominent it is to Joshua and Seungcheol, but judging from their identical knowing grins, Jeonghan realises that _truly,_ any and all form of subterfuge has been rendered futile once and for all. 

They will forever know how to read every plane, every curve, every surface of Jeonghan’s nonexistent heart. And maybe Jeonghan can live with that.

“I hate it when you two gang up on me,” he pretends to complain anyway. But Joshua sneaks in the briefest of kisses against Jeonghan’s neck while Seungcheol continues to rub circles against the most special spot on Jeonghan’s sternum, the one spot that is etched with the symbol of their forever, the crux of their destiny.

“We only do it because we love you,” Seungcheol replies, eyes gleaming with oceans of tenderness, “And you love us too.”

Jeonghan sighs, a smile slipping past his lips despite himself, despite all his pretense of whining and groaning. 

After all, he can’t really help it.

“I do,” he replies, putty in their arms once more, his worries fading into nothing but background noise.

It’s not magic, neither is it vampiric strength. But it’s something poignant nevertheless, something they are fashioning a _forever_ out of.

\----

The thing is, even after Seungcheol had urged him to come attend this…meeting of sorts (guess there really was no better word for it), even after Jeonghan had caved, there was still a significant part of Jeonghan that hadn’t been entirely convinced.

Seungcheol had spent the majority of the previous week telling him everything about this new and improved chapter of the insurgency - how things were different this time around, how there was a more stable leadership, a more democratic process of membership and action. How it had become more strategic than simply incendiary, how it had learned to cover its tracks from The Watch, had begun to even fight back against The Watch (“ _Were you fighting back against The Watch too?”_ the question had been on the tip of Jeonghan’s tongue, even if he didn’t actually ask it. _“Is that why you keep getting attacked by them? Is that why you came to Joshua the other night, all bruised and bloody?”)_

Apparently, the bar _had_ mobilised supernaturals in a way that was truly unprecedented, that had never been achieved before. It became the rare human-free safe space that Sojung’s era of the insurgency had sorely lacked - offering shelter, privacy and an intermingling of species that had only spurred better action, better unity, better resolve.

All of it had sounded a bit too idealistic to Jeonghan, a bit too improbable. Not that he was doubting the integrity of what Seungcheol was saying, but it all just seemed so... hard to imagine, something out of a fairytale, hardly feasible in the constant conflict of the real world. 

Sojung had had the same dreams once - of inter-species unity against a common oppressor, of a resistance that truly _meant_ something - but they were only pipe dreams, weren’t they? Weighed against the dangers, they were reduced to nothing, weren’t they?

But now that Jeonghan is here, in this dingy basement-room surrounded by an assortment of colleagues and friends and acquaintances and people from the life he once desperately tried to escape, there’s a certain thrill in the air that even Jeonghan isn’t immune to.

Jeon Wonwoo has a quiet sort of charisma, and from his frequent scrunchy eye-smiles, his frequent references to supernatural history and mythography all throughout his surprisingly stirring speech, Jeonghan can see why Seungcheol had called him a nerd. When Wonwoo talks about how they cannot remain complacent, how they cannot let human politicians pass laws that send them further into the shadows rather than bring them closer to the light of modernity and egalitarianism. When Wonwoo talks about how the only way they can get their voices heard is by sticking together, is by being smarter, by knowing when to strike and when to retreat, by looking out for each other, before everything else-

Jeonghan almost believes him. 

Wonwoo has the same bright-eyed passion and optimism that Sojung did back in the alley where Jeonghan had first met her, but Wonwoo also has wisdom, has _restraint._

When Sojung birthed this movement, there was no way of knowing what the future held, no way of knowing how this would all play out. There was no way of assessing the threats, of preparing for every outcome, of learning from other people’s mistakes. 

But now, there _is._ Now there’s an entire trajectory to draw inspiration from, draw caution from. And Jeon Wonwoo knows exactly what he’s doing.

After all, that’s why so many people - across species, across factions - showed up here today. Together, under one roof, united by a singular cause at last.

 _We must all rise up, together,_ that terrifying orange pamphlet had said. And maybe it had been right.

Maybe _Seungcheol_ had been right. 

Maybe Jeonghan really can grow to like this Jeon Wonwoo.

  
\---

After the speech wraps up, and after Wonwoo has spent the next hour carefully listening to everyone’s opinions, suggestions, strategies, and addressing them with the utmost fairness, something catches Jeonghan’s eye.

He squeezes Seungcheol and Joshua’s hands, says, “Wait outside for me? I’ll be there in a minute.”

Their eyebrows wrinkle in identical confusion, but they don’t question him any further. They simply nod, and leave him all alone in that dingy basement-room, the last of its occupants having filed out barely a few minutes ago.

Sucking in a deep breath, Jeonghan then makes his way towards the tiny, unobtrusive bookshelf ensconced in one corner of the room, it’s wood old and coated in a thick layer of dust, cracked in several places.

But it’s not the bookshelf per se that holds Jeonghan’s attention, that had made him want to escape everyone else’s company, that, now that he’s close enough to get a proper look at it, nearly makes Jeonghan stop breathing.

He extends a hand to touch them - a line of binded, yellowing manuscripts stacked against each other, the pages showing signs of rust, of the rigorous wear and tear that comes with the passage of a century’s worth of time, of tiny holes that have appeared along it in the aftermath or maggots or other wood-borne insects. But the ink is still dark and prominent, the writing as potent now as it was then. The slopes and circles of the sloppy handwriting unmistakably _his._

“They kept it,” says a recognisable voice from beside him, a friend who truly knows what it’s like to live through centuries, to survive the tribulations of time. A friend who knows exactly the value of these ancient artifacts, who is the only other person, besides Joshua and Seungcheol, who gets to see Jeonghan at his most vulnerable.

Xu Minghao’s accented twang is as soft and musical as ever, his smile indulgent like it often is. “They kept all of your work.” He walks over to stand right beside Jeonghan, one hand joining Jeonghan in carefully rifling through the binded paper adorning the bookshelf, “Preserved all the pamphlets, all the manuscripts you once wrote for the movement.”

“W-what do you mean, _they?”_ Jeonghan can’t even look away from the bookshelf, still not entirely believing that what he’s witnessing is real, that what it still exists, tangible flesh-and-blood that has stood the test of time, that has actually been preserved with care and purpose, even if the paper is ruptured by the imprints of rust and insects.

“You know who I mean,” Minghao replies, unfazed by the shock in Jeonghan’s voice. Sometimes, Minghao knows how to keep his cool in crisis situations even better than Joshua does. “Your old comrades, those who still went on even after Sojung passed away and after you left. They lived by your words then, and they still live by it now.”

It’s _unfathomable._

It’s unfathomable that they would even want to, that his words would even be considered worthy of referencing after an entire century has passed, after all the upheaval that the insurgency has witnessed, after all the horrors their world has succumbed to.

A long time ago, writing these pamphlets and manuscripts had given him a purpose he had been desperately searching for, had made him want to _live,_ and live _freely,_ not simply as a monster who lurks in the dark, not simply as a puerile creature of the night. After Sojung died, Jeonghan thought he was forsaking this too, was losing everything, all worthiness, all the skill and toil he had once contributed to the movement.

But turns out, he wasn’t.

Turns out, it was always here all along.

Jeonghan turns to face Minghao then, feeling suddenly overwhelmed, feeling like someone just punched him in the gut, “So they don’t hate me?”

Minghao laughs then, almost like he finds the question incredulous. “No, hyung. Quite the contrary. They’ve admired you, always.” He reaches over to pull out one of the manuscripts - _On The Importance Of Supernatural-Inclusion In Policymaking_ \- and rifles through it absently. “Why do you think so many vampires show up at your bar so often? You’re a bit of a legend around here, hyung. I can’t believe you didn’t notice.”

“I…” Jeonghan’s jaw drops open, awe and a feeling of...something utterly inexplicable twisting in his gut. How does one wrap one’s head around this? How does one wrap one’s head around the fact that....he was never truly forsaken after all? That he was remembered, that he always has been remembered? 

“I...didn’t. I had no idea”

Minghao looks up from his perusal of the manuscript, staring at Jeonghan from beyond his round wire-rimmed glasses, mirth evident in his eyes.

“Well, at least Seungcheol’s been a good influence on you,” he says, “Hopefully you’ll be a little less oblivious from now on.”

“Hey!” Jeonghan protests, though he knows it’s utterly futile. “I’m not- _oblivious.”_

Minghao gives him a look that tells him that he’s being deliberately obtuse, that no amount of insisting on Jeonghan’s part will convince him otherwise. And maybe, Jeonghan deserves it. After all, he _has_ been a gigantic idiot, and Seungcheol has been an excellent influence, someone who makes Jeonghan want to mend his oblivious ways once and for all.

“It was nice to see you here today, by the way.” Minghao chooses to change the subject, “A surprise, but a nice surprise. Come back again?”

His tone is hopeful, but not enough that it’s pressing or invasive - Minghao knows Jeonghan far too well, knows exactly what spooks Jeonghan and what carefully persuades him. Knows exactly how to nudge Jeonghan in the right direction.

“Maybe,” Jeonghan replies.

 _Definitely,_ Jeonghan thinks, and Sojung’s endless bright-eyed optimism flashes in his mind's eye once more, pushing him towards a cause that has always been far, far bigger than just himself, than just his own feelings.

Minghao smiles back again, still indulgent, but still the very picture of a calm, subtle affection.

He goes back to reading the manuscript.

\---

When he steps outside, Seungcheol and Jeonghan are waiting for him, their faces lighting up as soon as they lay eyes on Jeonghan.

“Ready to go home?” Seungcheol says, offering Jeonghan his right arm. His left arm is already hooked to Joshua’s, already synchronised in a way that’s more than just telepathic, is _fundamental,_ is consistently all-consuming.

“Yeah,” Jeonghan replies, taking Seungcheol’s proffered arm with a little too much eagerness, letting Seungcheol pull him closer again, letting Seungcheol place a chaste kiss against his temple.

 _Home,_ with Joshua. With Seungcheol.

Home, where they can carve out their shared eternity together, three interlocked hearts merging into one, even if Jeonghan’s is still nonexistent.

Their universe may still be tenuous, unknown dangers looming in every corner, but they’ve come this far, haven’t they?

After all, they have _each other._ What else can they possibly need?

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, um??? as always i set out to write, like 3,000 words but ended up writing 30,000? somebody stop me lol?
> 
> thank you to everyone who stuck with this fic through my very erratic updating schedule and appreciated these silly soft boys, and thank you especially to julie, who inspired this story in the first place. also a big big thank you to isi, for always being so kind to me.
> 
> non-svt idol appearances: sojung - sowon from gfriend, joohyun & her coven - all of red velvet
> 
> if you want to yell at me about my soft boys (or about how i can never write a fic under 5k words), here is my [twitter](https://twitter.com/mactsofservice) and here is my [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.qa/actsofservice)


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